To me coming up short as a team and for me not having a great particular game was tough to swallow, but your life doesn't end there. You must put your life into perspective and keep moving on.

At that time we didn't have much movement within our team. [ Pit Riley] pushed us as much as he could from a mental stand point. He knew it was time to leave and for us as players we knew it was time to part ways.

As a young man, you get to a point in your life where you feel like you have grown up and have to make decisions and not having that father figure in your life to guide you to making those decisions.

Also to have someone tell you when you can come and go. When I was faced with that decision, I just drew back on all my past decisions and especially my time in jail that this isn't the road I want to go down. That's why I really made a commitment towards school.

There were mistakes that I made that I did learn from. When you don't have responsibilities, the only responsibility is for yourself, but when you have someone there to mentor you, then you don't make stupid mistakes.

He was a great individual. People that don't know Patrick [Ewing] and only see what they read in the paper don't know this is a man of great integrity, love for his teammates, and love for this organization.

That was always a dream of mine to play division one basketball. Not knowing that I wasn't going to get the opportunity because of my past and previous couple of years in college. The opportunity to play with only one year of eligibility was great.