Recommended...........................*

 

He knew how to make us more afraid of letting each other down than we were of any opponent.

To my surprise, Hakeem turned around and left.  That's when I learned that, for fear to win, you have to be afraid, and for that moment, I wasn't.

. . . the true measure of a competitor is not by the number of opponents they defeat, but by what they do to surpass what they have already accomplished.

Live on the edge, play on the edge, but never hurt the team.

The play would be a textbook example of the age-old cliche: it's not how you start, but how you finish.  Effort and finish had become my most consistent attributes.

Every friend ain't your brother, and every brother ain't your friend.

I had just learned a lesson about how money works.  It's not about using your labor as the sole source of all your income.  It's about using your labor to acquire cash that you save that gives you an opportunity to leverage credit or assets to buy other assets that make you money.

They'll tell athletes all the time that your financial advisor, your agent, your marketing rep, all these people work for you, you should be the boss, and most of us are unprepared to be a boss, and quite frankly, I had to learn that those people actually don't work for you.

During the national anthem, I gave a strong prayer to my ancestors.  I knew I was going to need all the help I could get, so I prayed for toughness, poise, and love.  All that I hoped they passed down onto me.

*although I wish his editor had worked a little harder