When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. That's a terrible burden.

The Sixties was a perfect storm of disaffection with political leaders trying to pass off the same old platitudes to maintain the status quo and an unexpected courageousness in the masses of youth. Nothing on this scale had ever happened before in U.S. history and it hasn't happened since.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

When I was at UCLA, the Harlem Globetrotters offered me a million dollars to come play for them. I turned it down because my education was just as important as playing ball.

The only reason is that I hadn't seen The Modern Jazz Quartet perform live and a live performance is often where the real experience of jazz takes place. I'm not familiar with the Boswell Sisters.

Actor Mike Warren [was my former teammate], who was in Hill Street Blues. There are more, but it's starting to sound like a team reunion at Red Lobster. They were a great bunch of guys and we accomplished a lot together. That's something you don't forget.

Black people don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted.