To be honest with you, I (would) much rather play basketball and not be famous.
As far as carrying the torch for the years to come, I don't know. I just want to be the best basketball player I can be.
I realize now that there's a strength in dunking that I can use to my advantage. When you dunk all the time it isn't as demoralizing to the opponent, but when you dunk at a key moment in the game you can use it to change the momentum.
Everyone looks at your watch and it represents who you are, your values and your personal style.
I focus on one thing and one thing only - that's trying to win as many championships as I can.
Sometimes I do wonder what college would have been like. But I made my decision.
I don't have to hear that criticism, that idotic criticism anymore.
I draw from the crowd a lot.
It doesn't matter to me what place I get traded to. If I was traded someplace - I'd play anywhere.
Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It's stupid. It doesn't teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don't know how to post. They don't know the fundamentals of the game. It's stupid.
This is an award I couldn't have won on my own. I can't thank these guys enough. These are my guys, these are my brothers.
I had some shots that I felt like I should've made; I just didn't make them. I'm not going to shoot the ball great every night.
You just try to take it one day at a time, ... You step on the basketball floor and just play. It's fun. I'm comfortable with it.
I was just letting the shots fly. You know, I don't leave any bullets in the chamber.
I don't want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.
Everybody wants to talk about NBA players being selfish and arrogant and individuals. But what you saw today was a team bonding and facing adversity and coming out with a big win.
You have to be able to separate business from the love of the game. There were a lot of decisions made business-wise that I wasn't happy with, and I took a lot of blame over the years. But you have to be able to separate that from the love you have for the game.
In an individual sport, yes, you have to win titles. Baseball's different. But basketball, hockey? One person can control the tempo of a game, can completely alter the momentum of a series. There's a lot of great individual talent.
For us to be the team that got him that historic 10th championship is special for us.
I felt like when we came back from the All-Star break we needed everybody to feel like they were part of the team, ... I'm just trying to do whatever the team needs at any given time.
There's been a lot of talk of me being a one-man show but that's simply not the case. We win games when I score 40 points and we've won when I score 10.
I've played with IVs before, during and after games. I've played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don't miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn't that serious in the first place.
I'm just so excited. We all are. We've been waiting for this [the gold medal] for years now and it's finally here. This meant so much. It just felt so good.
I grew up in front of these people, and now they are seeing me as an 'older' young man.
I'm just right down the middle, man, ... It doesn't matter to me. I'd love him (Phil Jackson) as a coach. It doesn't matter to me. If they want him here, he'll be here. If he wants to come, he'll come, he'll coach and we'll go from there.
