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In the NBA, as in nowhere else in America, white people are utterly beholden to black people, and they're not about to let us off that easily. It's a kind of very mild payback for the last 500 years.

As far as playing, I didn't care who guarded me - red, yellow, black. I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game.

I always enjoyed playing ball, and it didn't matter to me whether I played with white kids or black. I never understood why an issue was made of who I played with, and I never felt comfortable, when I grew up, telling other people how to act.

Not sure if that will benefit me or hurt me, but I know I have the skills and am ready to play in the NBA regardless of my ethnicity.

Black players had an issue with Joe Torre. They weren't treated like everybody else. Even I got called out in a couple of meetings that I thought was unfair.

It's rare in the NBA, but I have a lot of young female fans from eight to eighteen because of the way I dress and the way I do my hair. People sometimes call me a pretty boy, but I embrace it. It's fun, and I guess it just kind of comes with being a good looking white guy in the league.

For a long time, I thought I was going to play basketball. There's not many 6-4 white guys playing the three spot in the NBA, so I realized I probably didn't have much of a future in basketball and that football was probably going to be my best bet.

It's really annoying for me. That's not what I'm playing for, to be the face of the NBA or to be this or that or to take LeBron's throne or whatever.

When I played, I received racial abuse but I was just one of a few black players and we weren't backed up by the authorities.

It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.