Combining the lack of emotional literacy they may be imbued with, with the fact that if you're black you're not supposed to be that smart and if you... as a boy you're not even supposed to like school. All of the sudden you've got kids who are afraid, black kids and Latino kids who are afraid to be great, afraid to bask in the enjoyment of education, lest they be labeled less than black, less than Latino, less they be called the oreo.

In the NBA you need a little bit more than that when Jordan is front of you. You need a little bit more than that when it is Barkley or Karl Malone or Shaq or whoever else. You need a lot more than that frankly if you're the English kid who can't jump.

I wasn't going to let Jerry Sloan embarrass me, because basketball had a proper role in my life. I suspected my basketball philosophy wasn't the bottom line anyway.

There are some people the gestation period is like an elephant's and it's just years and years before they're ready.

I'd probably have to leave home in order to become a basketball player of any note.

I always think coming out is something that you do for people who really deserve it. It should be.

I think that we ill-prepare athletes from the very beginning. From the moment they pick up a ball or kick or whatever it is they're doing. We ill-prepare them. Especially with the major sports. What you see is this cycle of entitlement that gets thrown their way, so the kid who is in junior high and hasn't finished his test, but still gets to play because he is an athlete, fails the test and still gets to play because they're an athlete, gets to get away with not doing chores at home because they've got practice.