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Philly will always have a special place in my heart, and I will cherish the great memories with the city and my teammates there.
I wanted to be the best player, so I thought in order for me to be the best player, I had to guard the best player on the court.
You've got organizations out there that are consistently at a high level. They're known to play the right way at the right time.
The key to success is to find things that you have a passion for and would enjoy doing, even if you weren't getting paid to do it.
I try to let the people I do business with off the court know that I'm serious about my business off the court. So I try not to mix the two.
I was always a guy who could score the ball as a kid, but everybody wanted to score. And I always wanted to be different in some type of way.
I understand that, in this league, there are a lot of guys who can be All Stars, be superstars, so timing and circumstance plays a huge role.
NBA players, we're directly involved in the tech world whether we know it or not. Media content and wearables directly influence us every day.
We have to have adversity in order for us to really reap the benefits and really just have an appreciation of how hard it is to win in the NBA.
It's natural to me. I played point guard my whole life up until my senior year of high school. Most people don't know that. It's just in my game.
I got a yoga mat, I do yoga twice a week. I do both regular and hot yoga. Lululemon has an extra large yoga mat, longer and wider, so it fits me.
It's important to dabble in things that interest you, and for me, I'm interested in the tech space that is here in Silicon Valley, fashion and golf.
I'm wearing a blazer, like, all the time. That's my go-to - a blazer - and I can just figure out if I want to wear jeans or slacks. Turn it into a suit.
If I get on the golf course, my basketball game is a direct reflection of how many rounds of golf I can get. So, the more rounds of golf, the better I play.
One move nobody knows about, when I catch the ball on the wing and I'm driving, I'm looking at the defender's legs, and I'm yanking their legs back as I run by.
When you go out there, you're not just representing your country or the NBA: you're representing your beliefs. You want to play hard for Someone who died for you.
A lot of sixth men have more responsibility, and they've made more of an impact sometimes than 80 percent of the rest of the guys on the team, so it's just a name.
When I'm out there playing basketball, it's just, 'Let me do me,' and everybody is going to benefit. I feel confident that whoever I'm out there with is going to win.
It's just something I pride myself on as a basketball player, having that knowledge, being the guy who can go to any situation and make the situation better for that team.
In every sector of business, it's really hard to build something where you can get on a good run. In sports, it's even harder because you only have a small window for an athletic career.
Sometimes fans, sometimes even players, they don't know the game sometimes, and they look at numbers, or they use smoke-and-mirrors as far as who's a top 15 player, who's a top 20 player.
When I played, I just wanted to guard the best player, and I didn't want him to score. That was just it, just competing. Along the way, it just kept building that I could be a great defender.
You always wonder how a coach's demeanor will be going from assistant to head coach. They can kind of change, the personality, and you don't know how that will affect the team or how they see him.
Seattle was my favorite team growing up, so I know a little bit about Coach Karl and his history. He's one of the best coaches in the game, well-respected by much of his peers and much of his players.
The Spurs, obviously - you look at an organization like that and say that's what you want to be consistent, because they've become consistent. That's what you start striving for night in and night out.
I wasn't highly touted coming out of high school, so it wasn't like I was expecting to get a lot of minutes. For me, I didn't know how good a player I was, even though I think I did decent as a freshman.
I'm a tennis fan, so I like Roger Federer. He's always two or three steps ahead, so he's hitting a shot, but he's also thinking about the next two shots. So I try to be in that frame of mind - to always be ahead.
The sixth man, the position, I don't have a problem with, but the award - it's not that it's not important, but being singled out, it's like affirmative action or something like that to me. So, it's like, whatever.
The same way you train yourself to be physically gifted player - whether you do weights, or running to get in shape or swimming - the mental side is the same way. You've got to train yourself to be ready for whatever.
There are a lot of guys who average a lot of points, but they make the game hard for themselves, and they make the game hard for their teammates, and that's why you never really see them win or get deep in the playoffs.
I'm a huge tennis fan, so the game I play the most is 'Top Spin.' You really have to know how to play tennis to get good at this game - whether you want to hit a forehand or a backhand, when's the best time to hit a slice - it's so real.
When I was growing up, there wasn't too much technology. There weren't so many channels that we were glued to on TV. We had to go outside and create our games. Kids had the habit of being active and exercising, just enjoying the fresh air.
My whole life, I've felt like I can do anything on the basketball court, from playing point guard in high school to having to play center one year in high school, doing everything in college and going through different roles in Philadelphia.
JaVale McGee is one of the smartest guys I know. Like, he's a nerd, plays with gadgets, and is into technology. He's funny - he's got crazy jokes, and his timing with jokes is really funny. You have to be really smart to think the way he does.
When things aren't going right, I can get out on the golf course, and when things are going really good on the court, I can go and enjoy the scenery, enjoy the weather. And when I'm too high, I can have golf humble me and beat me up a little bit.
Every player goes through streaks where they're just not making their shots. It may last two games, it may last ten games, and a lot of times, it's something off the court that is bothering you, or coach might cut your minutes for some unknown reason.
It's similar to basketball: when you go to different gyms and win or lose, you learn something new. So when kids get out of the classroom, go to a new environment and meet different people, it opens their eyes to new things, and they have fun learning.
They make documentaries like 'Fast Food Nation.' The food our kids are eating in schools, the vending machines kids go to a lot, the portions of food that American restaurants are serving that are bigger than anywhere else in the world - it's kind of crazy.
Because of my Nigerian heritage, Jumia's use of technology to deliver innovative online services to consumers and improve the quality of everyday life in Africa is very important to me. I'm thrilled to be a part of this unique enterprise that is shaping the future of digital Africa.
That's the number one thing for a guy for a new coach coming in. You've really got to buy into the system and believe it's going to work because, if you don't, it's going to cause conflict, and you're not always going to be on the same page as the other guys on the team or with the coach.
Draymond's always talking trash, and he's really good at getting you off your game. He's one of the guys that he'll talk trash, even when you're playing golf. He will knock you off your game... But when you see his swing, you're like, 'How do you talk trash so well, and your swing's this bad?'
When you first come in the NBA, you have a lot of conversations about saving your money, financially educating yourself, not just trusting whoever it is handling your money, not just having those meetings once a year, and not really putting the effort into learning the same way you learn your craft on the court.
So after 11 years you're just picking up all this information. I'm a basketball junky, so I watch old players. The '90s was a great era of basketball. I watched so much of that. That just helped me be a student of the game and pick up any moment. It's the 10,000 hour rule. You're just trying to master your craft.
With the exception of maybe Vegas or Miami once or twice, other than that, it's all the same to me. I can't hear anything in the club with the loud music, so you're in there, and you're like, 'I can't hear you because of the loud music.' I hate that, yelling back and forth. And I don't drink, so it's kind of pointless.
LeBron doesn't have any weaknesses, or he doesn't have a glaring weakness. So you've got to pick up on the smaller things to try to make him uncomfortable. Like knowing which side he likes to shoot threes off the dribble, which side he likes to drive. One side he'll drive left more often, and the other side he'll drive right more often.
The biggest thing is to give it back. You want to leave the game in a better situation than you came in with it. That's really important to me, especially being an avid reader and just learning about how to build businesses, learning how to make the most of the business you're in, the ins and outs of the relationships that you build as well.