I played in Joe Louis in a playoff game. I played there when the roof caved in for half a season. The facility is great for basketball because it goes straight up, so you feel like the fans are on top of you.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The last game I played in college was in the NIT against St. Mary's. That was the first time I had come to the Oakland area. So, the last game I played in college and the first game of my NBA career were out here in the Bay Area. It's pretty cool.
I grew up playing in an alley on the south side of Milwaukee.
St. Louis is still a special place for me. I still have my home there. I live there in the offseason. I enjoyed playing in front of 40,000 people every day. I tried to do my best to help the organization win. I had success there. We won two World Series. We went to three. That's something you can't take from me.
When I was young, it was fun being in the locker room and shagging balls in the outfield in spring training. But I couldn't keep my attention on the games for more than 30 minutes. I would sit there with my Game Boy the whole game.
I love Memphis. They've been good to me, the town and everything else. And quite frankly, I love the NBA and love being involved in it.
We used to play baseball back in that field and keep an eye out for the bulls.
I was in Charlotte, N.C., when they launched the NBA team there, the Charlotte Hornets. And the first guy to roll into town was Carolina native Michael Jordan.
I had no experience with broadcasting basketball games, so I took a tape recorder and went to a playground where there was a summer league, and I stood up in the top of the stands and I called the game.
When I started, there weren't any arenas. There was football fields, but they would only hold three or four or five hundred people at the most... We played a lot of high school auditoriums and things like that - a lot of churches... but boy, it has changed.
I just played at a club in L.A. called the Baked Potato. It fits like 90 people. It's like playing somewhere in a basement in, like, Indiana or somewhere where all your friends show up. It's really fun and there's a very different energy to that than to play to 50,000 at a Tokyo baseball stadium.