Quotes from Mike Conley Jr.

The more you are around your teammates and work with them, the better you will be in the season.

Every offseason when I'm back in Ohio, I get together with some of my former teammates and reminisce about our run in 2007.

I don't want a tech. I don't want to get one.

All the work I'm able to be a part of through Grizzlies Prep, Code Crew, our mentoring programs and with the Grizzlies Foundation, they all go hand in hand because the kids are our future.

I don't go to fast food restaurants anymore. That's out.

The best basketball game I ever played was probably when I was in the fifth grade.

The Grizzlies organization did a very good job of always pushing us in directions and making us aware of things we might not have been aware of when we were young.

The refs are trying to do the right thing. They're trying to make the right calls, but if you put a lot of pressure on them as far as being in their face, it's embarrassing. They don't want to get yelled at a fourth, fifth time.

Well, I think for everybody, Michael Jordan was the idol. He's one of my favorite players, but I had a few different guys I liked to watch, like Gary Payton and Isiah Thomas. Isiah was a guy I really loved to mimic my game after. There were a bunch of old-school guys I loved to watch.

I play 'Gears of War,' 'Halo,' other stuff. But 'Halo' is my game, definitely.

I enjoy the fans recognizing me.

I've been through a lot. A lot of highs. The lowest of lows. That's why I am how I am.

I mean, I spend every summer working hard to improve my game. I've taken parts of my game that I might have been uncomfortable with and worked on them to make them second nature.

I'm working hard every day and getting better every day.

I love horror movies. Any scary movie - if one comes out, I go see it, even if it's supposed to be bad. I want to get my own opinion of it.

I've had plenty of arguments in Memphis with Tony Allen, Marc Gasol, Rudy Gay, Zach Randolph, we all go through that spell, you ride with each other for so many years, you have a situation where you go at one another to push each other. It's normal in basketball, normal in life. It's just so public in this game.

There's guys that don't need to play with the ball. Tony Allen doesn't need to have the ball to be effective.

I don't hunt shots.

As athletes, it's our responsibility to help. It's easy for us to go out and affect people's lives in so many different ways. We don't even know how much we can touch people and change the direction of somebody's future.

I almost got traded my rookie year or my second year in the league.

There were times in my career where I could have easily been traded, easily been given up on, and I think me making strides, me making a commitment to myself to come in and get better showed people what I could do each year.

I'm not one of those guys that's going to beat you over the head and just yell at you all day.

When you have a good anything, you notice the difference - whether it's a good shooting sleeve or a pair of shoes or a jersey, we all feel the differences.

If you're not a Grizz fan, you might not even know what we're up to until playoffs come around. We get forgotten and sometimes slighted.