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You have to raise your game, you have to be ready to compete, and you've just got to give Hakeem credit. He was great. He really was great.
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Believe it or not, the Navy requires plebes to actually be able to swim.
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I played for a long time, and there's not many guys I would say, 'O.K., take any shot you want.'
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Most proud moment: Winning the championship in 2003 with a great team, retiring, and going out in the perfect way. Had a great journey and knowing it was the right time to focus more on family and community activities.
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Your peers will respect you for your integrity and character, not your possessions.
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My dad was in the Navy, and I was raised with a strong commitment to service.
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A lot of these teams really forget that part of success comes with having veteran leadership. You see a lot of teams forget that and start letting go of these old veterans. They don't realize how important it is to have a veteran voice in your locker room or on the bench. It's important to have guys who have been there before.
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When you get on the floor, you've got to think you're the best player. Everybody does that.
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It's the playoffs. There's no room for okay.
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My fouls used to be ticky-tacky, but I learned real fast to make them count.
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We went through a nice stretch of big guys. But soon, everyone is going to realize that there's only one Steph Curry.
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Just being raised in a home where my mother, from as early as I can remember, always taught me to be thinking about other people first, basically that our service was going to be the measure of our success.
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I was always curious. I wanted to learn a little about a lot of things, and I really had to get pushed to achieve.
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USNA had a great engineering school, which was one of my interests, and I knew I would benefit from the great discipline and accountability that Navy provides.
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I hope the young guys who are playing today realize what they have been given and will take it upon themselves to give back in return.
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All this stuff doesn't happen to you for your own sake. It doesn't happen to you so you can fill your shelves with trophies or line your pockets with cash; it happens so you can have a positive influence and encourage other people.
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If you're a better scorer than me, I'll put you down on the block; you score. I don't care. I can do other things.
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This is sports. In sports, you win and you lose. That's the nature of sports. You can't get away from that part of it. And if you get too hung up on the losing part, then you miss the boat. The competition part, a game like that, is why you play sports. That is as good as it gets.
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You give a team a month - three weeks - to get together, and you're going to make mistakes. You're just not going to be as sharp.
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It takes time; you look at what happened with LeBron, Wade, and Bosh. It took them a year or two to get their legs underneath them and figure things out, and even then, that run was relatively short.
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That's what university life is all about. Challenging, questioning, enjoying good people and good friends, and pushing yourself to the limit.
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I'm not a great reader, believe it or not. It's not the vocabulary - my father made me read the dictionary when I was little - but my attention span is poor. Takes me months to read one book.
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If you forget your history, you forget who you are.
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Marc Gasol, he's more of a true center. There are guys who play that traditional center role, but the game is also played differently now.