Quotes from Jermaine O'Neal

I thought Portland had a really good chance. But after we didn't win it, I knew my time was up there. But it wasn't a totally bad situation for me there. It was a great situation coming out of high school.

I'm very open to Portland.

I'm continuing to figure it out every single year: Life is a challenge, and the ones that succeed in life are the tough-minded ones that are not willing to accept failure.

Any athlete can preach to this, that when things aren't going well, you tend to bring it home, and the people that take the brunt of it is the family.

I love Danny Ainge.

Sometimes you can't be a champion. That doesn't determine who you are. But you can be a champion father, and that means everything.

The Detroit situation shocked the whole system. Obviously you don't condone any type of fighting. But you've got to make the best decision for you and your family at the time, and you don't have a lot of time to think out that process.

I'm going to try to give everything I've got, and hopefully whatever I got is good enough to help my team win.

I just want to understand better why an age limit is coming up. That's all. I'm not playing the race card, I'm not calling anybody a racist. I'm just talking about the facts. The product and economic reasons can't be the reason, because the league is doing well and the prime faces of the NBA are of high-school players.

Sometimes when you have a disconnect within your team, there's no way you can win.

Everything else I've been able to enjoy, but a Finals game is something that I desperately want to do I want to feel that environment.

I cannot wait to get to Boston and start to practice with the rest of the team in pursuit of a championship.

I want to be able to function and that's the conversation that I'm having now more than ever - playing vs. functioning while I'm finished playing.

Look at the Seattle Seahawks. They talk it, they walk it and they play like wild animals. Sometimes you need that to win.

When we can reach out as coaches and give back to these kids and touch them with the knowledge and with the thought process to give them the opportunity to do something that they dream about doing, that's what God put us here for.

There are only two things that probably can stop me from playing - rapture, God coming back, and an ACL injury.

The Warriors have an old-school work ethic.

When people question your integrity, when people question who you are from afar, when they've never had a conversation with you, and don't know the time and effort you've put into your communities, but then you're kind of this thug, this out of control player, that makes no sense to me.

I admire Tim Duncan, because he put on his hard hat and said, 'I'm going to stick it out.' He was dedicated to one team and to winning a championship.

When the opportunity arose for me to join an organization like the Celtics, I could not refuse.

It's hard to regret stuff. You make decisions and you go with it.

Holding up Shaq every damn day - it's crazy, you do it four times a year, but doing it every day in practice is difficult.

Going from a situation where you're the best player on the court every time to the fourth-best player in your position, it humbled me.

You see a lot of people in sports who need to be humbled first to become who they are.