I ask myself why I do it. Maybe it's to prove I'm still around. It takes a lot out of my body. I'm not an NBA player anymore. At my age, very few people can handle it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I didn't like how my NBA career ended because I wanted to go out on my own terms. But nobody tried to believe in me, that I could go back and play. I can still play at 39.
Playing all of these games, getting to know everything about the NBA, you realize that you are your own business. You have business meetings to go to, signings to go to. Like, I'm only 20, but the stuff I'm doing the average 20-year-old isn't doing.
Everybody in the NBA works on their game. I just tried to follow that lead when I was in high school, college - and now.
I tried to make a point of doing things outside the box, of not having basketball consume me.
I remember when I was in college, people told me I couldn't play in the NBA. There's always somebody saying you can't do it, and those people have to be ignored.
As I get older, I find myself way more into sports. I'm in a basketball league. You maybe know some of the people in it. They're real people, not fake ones like me.
I don't play ball because I want attention. I do it because it gives me the opportunity to bust somebody's head. And I just love to do it. I love what I do.
If someone were to ask me before I made the NBA, you going to have to go through all this, you're going to have to sign your soul away to play in the league, I still would have done it.
It's a heavy duty to try to do everything and please everybody. My job was to go out there and play the game of basketball as best I can and provide entertainment for everyone who wanted to watch basketball. Obviously, people may not agree with that; again, I can't live with what everyone's impression of what I should or what I shouldn't do.
There was the misconception out there that I retired after the 2008 season, but that was never the case. I wasn't done with basketball yet, and I'm still not done.