First of all, I'm not buff enough. I got pushed away from the basket. And even when I didn't, I couldn't get anyone to throw me a pass.
Westerners respect privacy, and they are very competitive in terms of work and personalities. My teammates in China and I can talk about everything. But with my Houston Rockets teammates, even though we're friends, we cannot ask each other about everything.
To miss one year is a long time. I've never been in this situation before, and I'm getting as much information as I can about my foot, to see what's the best for me and best for the Rockets.
Kobe's heart is as strong as his muscles.
It's always nice to start the season with a win.
The NBA is a big family, and I think of all these rookies as my brothers. I still believe I am blue collar among the All-Stars.
Others are improving very fast, and I'm not improving as fast, and that bothers me.
I only want to play basketball, and play it well and be happy about it. But I realize that with being famous, comes a lot of demands.
A good leader must be fair.
Who creates a thing is not as important as what the thing is. Who created baseball? Who created basketball? Who created the space program? Who created - we could go on and on. We could argue about who created something. We all are participants in it.
I never knew what Amazon was. I've never seen any of those series, even on cable. I've never seen The Sopranos, or Mad Men. I'm out every night and when I come home, I watch the end of the baseball or basketball game, and there's Charlie Rose and I go to sleep.
I made my first mix tape when I was 14. I used to play basketball and ride bikes, but I think I just latched onto music because I figured I could be really good at it on my own.
He fouled out in the fourth quarter, and that's when I really started getting points. He was no more at fault than anyone.
We're all fascinated by the numbers, as we were about the 100 points.
It was a challenge to my teammates to help me.
That's my tag, whether I like it or not.
They were willing to do anything to stop me.
I was not in touch with reality. Growing up, I was being shielded without my knowing it, because even all the way up to the age of 15, I made these paper basketball men and played with them, like action figures.
Baseball is not like football, basketball where a momentum is something made. You don't really have that kind of momentum in baseball.
Set the basketball on the kitchen table. Open a cupboard, get out a bottle of sesame seeds, and place a single seed beside the basketball. If you were to reduce the Earth to the size of a basketball, all the fresh surface water on the planet - all those rivers and lakes and ponds and streams - would fit inside that one tiny sesame seed. Add a second sesame seed; now you have all the usable underground water as well. Is fresh water a scarce resource?
I think the greatest all-around athlete ever was Jim Brown. He played lacrosse, basketball and ran track at Syracuse. He played professional football for the Browns.
I still regret that I never played soccer in high school. I chose basketball over soccer.
Whether philosophically you believe in a public subsidization of an arena or a stadium, that's the reality. We can't have professional basketball in this community by the end of our lease in 2010 without subsidization.
Basketball is the worst sport. They need to raise the basket at least two feet.
You can't not be into basketball and grow up in Chicago or live in L.A., because people are so fanatical about the teams. You know what's going on with the games even if you don't watch.
