When I was coaching at Kentucky - I was a grad assistant and I just got through playing and we won the NCAA Championship in 1978, so I stayed after I got through playing - we had Japan's national team coach Mototaka Kohama come to Lexington to spend the year and study basketball. He and I became great friends, so we hung out together.
I feel like I've had 20 years of experience at a very high level, if you throw in college, playing overseas, I've played in hundreds and hundreds of games.
I've been shooting my whole life. I don't remember a team where I wasn't playing basketball. It's something I really enjoy, and I shoot for hours at a time.
I've had a number of kids in the NBA that I've coached and a number of other great players that I've coached.
Leadership starts at the top.
This is a tremendous opportunity to be named head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, and it's a role I have been studying for over the course of my playing days.
People asked me, 'Why aren't you doing something more important?' When I was doing well in the D-League, they were like, 'Why can't you get an NBA job? Or a college job?' I don't think people thought much of what I was doing. That's fine. I was learning. Not just X's and O's, but team dynamics.
Ninety percent of the coaches in the NBA are guards, and there aren't very many big men people coaching, I happen to be one of them and when I coached, everybody on my team, including the guards, had a hook shot, so that it was their bail out shot.
I signed a contract with Phil Jackson, the man who has more championship rings, as far as I know, than anybody else. He was the best guy we thought we could find to run the New York Knicks.
The NBA fits my game.
I want to coach because I love it. I don't want to sound hokey, but when you play for Frank McGuire, Dean Smith, and Pete Newell - they taught me a lot - I want to share what they taught me with a lot of people. I don't want to stop doing this.
I didn't grow up playing football. I wanted to be a basketball player.
Be quick without hurrying.
I have an incredible amount of basketball knowledge, and I think a lot of that is derived from having a Hall of Fame college basketball coach who was very knowledgeable of the game and I had a great high school coach who was also very knowledgeable.
I worked every day - Christmas Eve, birthdays - trying to become a great basketball player. Everywhere I went, I had a basketball.
I've always been a basketball player. My earliest memories are of playing basketball. I was born playing it. It's why I'm so comfortable on the floor.
I had a relationship with John Wooden. I spoke at his memorial service.
When you speak of the Pat Rileys, the Phil Jacksons, you have to speak of Don Nelson and the success that he has had in the game.
So you're dealing with a coach, and you're dealing with a guy who's actually experienced NBA basketball from a player's perspective and actually goes about it that way.
Manute Bol taught my family the game of basketball.
College, our job is to get guys to get better. Work hard, get better and be in position so when your time comes you get to play in the NBA.
Assistants like Tim Grgurich worked with me and watched film of me from my Oregon State days.
The game of basketball has been amazing to me, to my family.
Seven years ago, my father and I realized that our relationship was extremely unique, especially in the African-American community. He raised me to not only understand the fundamentals of basketball and to try to be a player with a high basketball IQ, but he wanted me to understand that my image and my name meant more than stats.
They don't work with you to get better in the NBA. Either you're ready or you're out and you go to the G-League or Europe.
