Pressure is the single mom who is trying to scuffle and pay her rent. We get paid a lot of money to play a game. Don't get me wrong: there are challenges. But to call it pressure is almost an insult to regular people.
Sometimes, it's just your turn to go through hard times.
I know, personally, people said a lot about what kind of defender I was. So I wanted to get better at it.
I'm loyal to Portland. I want to play my whole career here, but at any moment, they can decide we want somebody else.
This era is like, 'Oh, I want to win championships, and how many rings do you have?' I've said that's what I play for: to win. But I'm not as overly consumed by that as how I treat people around me. And how I care about the people around me.
I'm rapping, I'm hooping, I'm on a max-contract, I got a big shoe deal. Everything is good now. So of course, the support is going to be there, the love is going to be there, but what's going to happen when it changes or when I'm on the back-end of my career or when I ain't on TV all the time?
Some shots, for me, are a good shot even if it's forced. The way it might look to a person watching, they might look at it like, 'That's a tough shot.' But for me, it's not a tough decision. I'm committed to those shots, and I spend time working on them.
I feel like when it comes to rap - like, real rap music - and knowing the pioneers of rap, I feel like there's no competition for me in the NBA. Other guys can rap, but they're not as invested or as deep into actual music as I am and always have been. I think that might be what the difference is. I'm more wanting to be an artist.
I started working with Special Olympics when I was 17 years old. I'll never forget the first time I did it: I was at Weber State, and it was the summer before I started school. We have to get up in the morning and do this Special Olympics camp.
I read, I watch a lot of movies, I'm constantly living, so I'm constantly having more to say.
When I get done playing basketball, I'm definitely not going to be a rapper. I'm not going to be an old person who is focused on being a rapper.
Injuries are a part of the game. Every athlete knows that.
I've never had issues with stardom.
With Biggie, I thought his flow and his swag was better than Tupac's, but I thought Tupac's passion and ability to relate to the average person was better than Biggie, and I thought Nas was kind of like both, with a lot substance going but a lot of swag.
A lot of people kind of... conform. I don't want it to sound like I'm saying don't care about championships. That's not my point. But what I'm saying is a lot of people give in to the pressure of, 'I didn't have this; I didn't have rings.'
I grew up a Warriors fan.
I love music. In a lot of my downtime, I spend time listening to other people's music or other people's rhymes and writing my own.
I started rapping towards the end of middle school. In high school, with a lot of my friends, we would make beats and just start rapping - beating on the wall, beating on the table and freestyling.
I like '1989,' the whole album. 'Welcome to New York,' 'Blank Space,' 'Bad Blood' - all of it!
For me it's just amazing that I grew up watching Tim Duncan and KG and Kobe and Paul Pierce, Allen Iverson and all those guys and now it's like, 'Man, I can't believe they actually got old.' It's like they actually walked away. It's crazy to think about, but the game has to keep moving.
