I'm not playing for other people; if I start thinking in those terms I would put too much pressure on myself. I play basketball because that is what I love to do.
My identity is in Christ, not in basketball.
God loves me, and that he has the perfect plan for me. His plan will take me through a lots of ups and downs, but if I stay faithful to him that in the end he will work everything for my good. Now when I play basketball, I don't play for anyone else, I only play for God. That's the type of purpose that he gave me, and once he gave me that purpose, is when I found my peace, and once I got my peace, that's when I got my joy.
And when other people see me play basketball...the way I treat my teammates, the opponents, the refs, that's all a reflection of God's image and God's love so that's the stuff I try to focus on.
Just because I had a good game doesn't change who I am, my identity is in Christ and not in basketball, I love playing basketball and it's my job but at the same time I recognize that I'm a sinner and that's not gonna change regardless of how well I play on the court
You don't get respect for being an Asian-American basketball player in the U.S.
I get scared of a lot of attention. I get scared of the spotlight. And I'm not talking about on the basketball court.
Faith, family, academics and then sports was the order of priorities in my family. My parents really stuck to these principles when raising me and my two brothers. As long as we took care of everything, they let us play as much basketball as we wanted.
I was shocked cause I didn't even know that they made my jersey. I didn't know that they made it so fast, so when I saw it I was like, I had to look three times and I was like, 'Did they customize that?' And then I saw a couple of other ones and I was like, ok, they must've made them overnight or something.
You have to be wired a certain way to be a professional basketball player, and the way my body grew, something happened genetically that allowed me to become a lot more explosive.
