"I don't know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody - somewhere - was practicing more than me."

"As far as playing, I didn't care who guarded me - red, yellow, black. I just didn't want a white guy guarding me, because it's disrespect to my game."

"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."

"Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players."

"I really don't like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me to have it."

"When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball."

"A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals."

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

"I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American."

"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."

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

"While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use, he who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions. He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion: Let nature take its course."

"Once you are labeled 'the best' you want to stay up there, and you can't do it by loafing around."

"But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever."

"The best players will play. That's the way it will always be."