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I had a vision of how basketball should be played. And the vision was the Knicks teams that won the championship in 1970 and 1973. I wanted a team that emphasized defense. I wanted a team that on offense had a system where players moved off the ball, and the ball moved.

The Knicks left me open a lot of times the last time we played them, and I was just making sure I took the shots that were there.

The thing with NBA teams, a lot of times they just want to get you back on the floor to play, so as a player you've got to be very, very smart.

I loved going to the Knicks because we won the Atlantic Division championship. We went from winning 21 games or 19 games to winning 52 games in a short period of time. I loved coaching Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley and all those guys.

When I was small, playing NBA Live, that's how I knew everyone in the NBA. That's how I learned about the players.

In the NBA, you're taking a bunch of different talents, and you're managing them. You have to give them a system; you have to give them a belief. That's why coaches like Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich are so great: because they gave the team confidence in the system and in their ability to execute night in and night out.

I couldn't have come close without my teammates' help because the Knicks didn't want me to make 100.

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.

People think that just because you're a center, you're not as smart as the guards or the smaller guys.

I interned for the Knicks for one year doing community relations, but I absolutely hated it. It was a desk job, and the team was not good at all, and I didn't realize how much that correlated to the office. It was just gray, gloomy days.