“It hasn’t always been easy. There’s a lot of hard moments. Sometimes you learn from the end of the bench. Sometimes you learn from injuries. Sometimes you learn the most through the hard things. If you can keep a good attitude and keep on working, eventually situations change, and you can put those things to use.”
“You can never expect things to happen like they did the last time. You still have to put in the work.”
“You’ve got to go through some good times and some bad times, and hopefully you’re able to recover from the bad times.”
“Shooting threes is always going to be what I do best.”
“As a shooter, the one thing you want to be is consistent.”
“I’ve been shooting my whole life. I don’t remember a team where I wasn’t playing basketball. It’s something I really enjoy, and I shoot for hours at a time.”
“A lot of things in life, you can be told the right way to do it, but you’ve kind of got to learn by your own mistakes. It’s just human nature.”
“Well, the LeBron James of the world don’t come around very often. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
“Every game is its own thing in the playoffs. When you’re in them long enough, you understand. If a playoff series goes six or seven games, it’s like a rollercoaster. Your emotions are so up, then they’re so down. ‘You can’t do anything right! Then everything’s going your way!’”
“It’s hard to play basketball without a point guard – it’s an important position.”
“To have a superstar – he’s Allen Iverson – he really took me under his wing and really forced me to shoot the ball and forced me to make plays, and to have him do that for me – and the way he was always in my ear telling me to shoot the ball and supporting me – it’s a big deal.”
“If you shoot with mechanics where you’ve got your knees bending in all the way, you’re not using your hips properly, you get all of this tendinitis and knee pain.”
“I’ll see some random guy and really like how he’s locking his wrist when he’s shooting or how a guy is catching the ball. It can be a little reminder that that’s something I have to think about today.”
“You don’t ever want to be a mechanical basketball player, but as far as technique and things, I like to have certain check points in my shot, certain things that I can count on and think about. It kind of helps me to be consistent.”
“The mental side of sports, it’s huge. It’s such a massive part of the game.”
“You can visualize, and you can try to trick yourself into thinking a certain way. There’s all kinds of things you can do to try to get in the right spot mentally. But at the end of the day, to have real confidence, you’ve got to be doing good at your craft.”
“A player senses when a coach loses confidence in him. That, more than anything, can throw a player.”
“Diving is cool to watch. Springboard or platform – it doesn’t matter.”
“I loved college. If I could’ve gone another year, I’d have gone another year, you know what I mean? Those were some of the best memories of my life.”
“I like doing drills and when coaches take you through drills and stuff, but I don’t like counting shots and things like that. I just shoot until I feel good.”
“If I see something in somebody, if it’s something similar in my shot, I feel like it’s the same type of thing in life. People who tell you what to do all the time or have all the answers for you, it’s like, ‘OK, whatever.’ But if you’ve gone through something in life, you can speak to something a little more.”
“I only try to talk to people about things I really do use in my shot. If I see something similar and something that will help them, then you try to come to them and say, ‘I think I might have something for you. Think about it if you like it.’ If they do, and they want to keep talking about it, then I will.”
“I have strong faith, and I have strong family.”
“My parents didn’t pay for college because we all got scholarships.”
“I loved being 36.”
“I don’t think I ever would have imagined having this career.”
“I probably need to hold my emotions in check a little more, but that’s just part of my wiring, too.”
“The playoffs are a chess match, with adjustments every game.”
“You’re not going to reinvent yourself in the middle of a playoff series.”
“It’s hard when you get down. You start pressing a little bit trying to get back in the game.”
“Midseason trades are hard.”
“I’ve always had a good relationship with superstar players. I don’t really demand the ball a lot.”
“That’s when I’m at my best: when I’m surrounded by good players.”
“It’s easy to draw up isolation basketball – it’s not easy to draw up great motion offense with passing and cutting.”
“LeBron carries a certain weight. You feel him all the time. On the court, off the court, in the organization. I don’t say ‘weight’ in a bad way, but his presence is always felt. He is striving for greatness at all times. Because he’s such a magnetic personality and such an incredible basketball player, people follow him.”
“The NBA is a beautiful job in a lot of ways. But for living stability, thinking you’re going to be somewhere for a long time, it’s not for that.”
“I do remember my first 3-point attempt. I missed it.”
“Do I consider the 2003 Draft class the best ever? Yes, absolutely!”
“Draft night for me – I watched it in my dorm in college. And it started off with just me and a friend, because I knew I probably wasn’t going to get picked right away. I thought it was going to be a little later. But, you know, you watch the whole thing. You never know what might happen, so you gotta watch.”
“I’ve never been a break-you-down, one-on-one guy.”
“I run around a lot. I shoot a lot of threes. And that’s just kind of what I’ve done since I was really young.”
“I’ve never played the jack-it-up kinda game; that’s just not who I am.”
“I love thinking about mechanics and having your mind agree with the mechanics. Sometimes you can shoot it correctly, but your mind doesn’t think that it’s right. So it’s like, how do you get your mind to trust that that’s the right way to shoot it.”
“I’ve played with a couple good shooters, but I’ve never been on a team where there’s been three, four, five, six good shooters. And I’ve always thought that nothing gets you open more than being surrounded by good shooters.”
“In Atlanta, we ran a motion offense, so, obviously, I was on the move a lot.”
“I watched the Bulls growing up. To be part of an organization like that is great.”
“The Bulls are first class in every way: great people, organization, culture, and a great place to play basketball.”
“Chicago is an amazing place for sports.”
“If you want to be a great team, you’ve got to be able to play 48 minutes.”
“I’ve always tried to set my standards high on a daily basis.”
“I’ve never been a basketball prodigy. I’ve always had to work, earn my way. And that’s the way I want it to be.”
“I never casually shoot shots, ever. I shoot the same way every time. I shoot the same shots that I’d shoot during the game.”
“I don’t shoot shots just to shoot shots. I’m always working in a rhythm, working on mechanics. I’ve got a checklist of the things I need to do with my form, my legs, my arms, all of my mechanics.”
“A lot of guys can shoot two, three, four, five, six, seven, 10 feet behind the 3-point line. A lot of people can do it. It’s just, when is it going to be considered a good shot? When are coaches going to encourage you to shoot that shot?”
“You have to buy into what the team is doing and get lost in that process. When you make it about yourself, that’s when you can start to press a little bit.”
“If the team is scoring, and I’m on the court, that’s as good as me scoring.”
“Off-seasons hurt when you lose the last game.”
“Every moment is big in the playoffs.”
“Moments can change games; moments can create a run.”
“If there’s a loose ball, dive on the floor. If you can take a charge, do that. The playoffs are all about scratching. Whatever it takes.”
“Most guys are either big talkers or big workers.”
“You don’t want to be a streaky shooter.”
“Shooting is all about rhythm and confidence, and sometimes those are the last things that get there.”
“I love it when the best team beats the best players.”
“I’ve played for some really good coaches, been on some really good teams. I learned a lot.”
“When I came into the NBA, coaches wanted you to shoot a midrange shot or two before you shot your 3 – you know, to get an ‘easy one’ first.”
“That is what shooting is. There is no secret sauce, man. You’ve got to find mechanics that you can make the same every time, and you’ve got to do it over and over again, and you can’t just shoot for rhythm. You’ve got to understand what you are doing. You have to focus on those details every day.”
“You’re always trying to get better. You’re always tinkering. You’re always learning new things.”
“Teams are trying to get the advantage over the other team by what kind of reads we can get, how can we measure guys if they’re tired – all these things.”
“It’s easy on teams when you have got superstars. I mean, they’re really good. And you give them the ball, and you say, ‘Make a play.’”
“Anytime something is a little new and a little fresh, it’s going to be critiqued.”
“It’s very rare to find a basketball coach that gets both: that gets the Xs and Os and also gets life.”
“There are definitely times during a game when you need someone to step up and make a play.”
“I’ve been on some really good teams.”
“When I first came to Atlanta, I did not want to come here; I got traded here.”
“Not everyone gets to have one of the few super-dominant, all-pro, superstars in this league, and so playing with the pass and playing with space and playing quick is a really good backup.”
“I know that I love the whole game of basketball, and that’s what I’ve always believed in.”
“For me, I’ve never really thought of myself as labeled as a shooter or whatever. People can say whatever they want.”
“I have the most amazing job. I play basketball and keep working at it and trying to get better.”
“Out of high school, all I heard was ‘one dimensional,’ ‘can’t do anything but shoot.’”
“I see a David West score 47, and yeah, it’d be cool to put up numbers like that. But I don’t need that to make me happy.”
“It’s frustrating when teams try to take me out. But there’s a lot of other ways to win besides shooting.”
“I’m not a cold-weather guy.”
“I never really modeled my game after anybody.”
“I’m my own person and my own player. Not that I don’t admire other players and try and do similar things.”
“Besides shooting, I think I need to work on everything. I need to get stronger, quicker, work on my ballhandling, and develop a go-to move.”
“I would say moving to Iowa turned out to be the best thing for my basketball career.”
“Everyone wants to be liked.”
“I feel like I’m a pretty good judge of character because I’ve had to judge a lot of characters.”
“The people you end up hanging out with are the people you become.”
“I’m not afraid of changing something to try to be better at it.”
“I think some people get just locked into ‘this is the way it has to be,’ and they’re afraid of messing something up. I don’t ever want to be that way with shooting or with anything, really – not just shooting.”
“It’s good to always try to learn and try to grow.”
“I’ve always believed the better the players I’m surrounded by, the better I am. I’ve never tried to think of myself as anything different. I know who I am as a basketball player and I’m never going to try to pretend that I’m more or less, but definitely not more.”
“I have a hard time imagining a life without basketball.”
“Analytics, math, science has gone into a lot of different areas of the NBA.”
“I think any of the older guys you can poll throughout the NBA, they’re super-regimented. Because as long as that body lasts, your mind should be better; your shot should be better. But the reality is, at some point, your body does break down – you do get older – so it’s just, how do you prolong that as long as possible?”
“Sometimes it helps to take a couple days off, as weird as that sounds. Every once in a while, I could just shoot so many shots. You can get so, like, intense with it all. It’s like in life, right? We’re all created for a sabbath day or for a day of rest. You sometimes need that in shooting, too.”
“I had a column in high school for our school newspaper. I enjoy writing.”
“I do better in life when my world seems a little smaller.”
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