The motivation for me is just the game itself, just playing the game the right way and trying to win, compete every time I step out there on the floor. That's motivation enough for me to go out there and play well.

The hunger [to success] is the same, no matter what it is that you're doing. It's like an unquenchable thirst to learn more, or to feel like you could have done more, and to be brutally honest and self critical, which is very hard to do. It's easy, and human nature is to just blame somebody else. It's very, very hard to self assess.

Once you know what it is in life that you want to do, then the world basically becomes your library. Everything you view, you can view from that perspective, which makes everything a learning asset for you.

I focus on one thing and one thing only - that's trying to win as many championships as I can.

By eloquence I understand those appeals to our moral perceptions that produce emotion as soon as they are uttered. This is the very enthusiasm that is the parent of poetry. Let the same man go to his closet and clothe in numbers conceptions full of the same fire and spirit, and they will be poetry.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.