I've heard the joke a million times that "Jews in Sports" must be the thinnest book in the world. Actually, I've seen a lot of great players working at the Maccabi Games.

It's fair to say that Jews dominated basketball and that started in the 30s in all the big cities. I think it was simply because Jews lived in ghettoes and basketball is a great schoolyard game. You don't need a lot of space or equipment and you can adapt it to how many players you have.

Once people couldn't trust the college game, some checked out the pro game, but that was in big trouble, too. We had no clock and a lot of faults. People looked at the slow pace and at big guys like George Mikan and said pro basketball was just for overgrown pituitary cases. Baseball and football were numbers one and two and pro basketball wasn't even in the same universe.

I was a center in college but I was a high post guy, feeding cutters and rebounding. Going to pro ball, I clearly wasn't big and strong enough to play center against giants like Mikan so I kept evolving.

The real secret to my success was I could shoot with either hand. Ironically, I became ambidextrous as a direct result of breaking my right hand.

I always stayed on before and after practice. I just think that if you want to excel at anything, be it basketball, dance or the piano, you need to practice a lot.

As for the work ethic, I'm just the kind of guy who takes what he does seriously. I never missed a day of school, I've rarely missed work and I played all those straight games; my streak only ended when I broke my cheekbone.