My coach told me, "Larry, no matter how much you work at it, there's always someone out there who's working just a little harder - if you take 150 practice shots, he's taking 200." And that drove me.

What's better? Dogs or broomsticks? I mean will the world really ever know?

Basketball was always a game to me. One of the greatest things in life for me was to be able to play what I loved dearly and get paid for it. So it was always a game to me and that's how I perceived everything.

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you're not giving it all you've got.

I've got a theory that if you give 100% all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.

The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was I really got irritated when they put a white guy on me.

If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she'd get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don't mean she wouldn't pay the bank, but the children always came first.