When Russell was out, you stepped your game up for me, for the team. There were nights where you made me look way better than I am. You clean up so many of our mistakes, man, and we appreciate that. From everybody on the team, we appreciate that, man, and I thank you so much for giving me confidence when I didn't have it, for always being there when I wanted to talk to you, when I wanted to call, for arguing with me all the time, making me better, and realizing I'm not always right. Thank you, man. I appreciate you.

And last, my mom. I don’t think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were 18 years old. Three years later, I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys by the time you were 21 years old. Everybody told us we weren’t supposed to be here. We went from apartment to apartment by ourselves. One of the best memories I had was when we moved into our first apartment, no bed, no furniture and we just sat in the living room and just hugged each other. We thought we made it.

It's part of my game, getting to the free-throw line and being aggressive. If you say that I get superstar calls or I get babied by the refs, that's just taking away from how I play. That's disrespectful to me.

I don’t watch a lot of other basketball away from the gym. But I do look at LeBron’s box score. I want to see how many points, rebounds and assists he had, and how he shot from the field. If he had 30 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, I can tell you exactly how he did it, what type of shots he made and who he passed to.

Hopefully before I'm done, I can be on an Olympic team.

I'm not into no basketball beef.

You know, I think more people should watch women's basketball. It'd do so much for the game.