Quotes About NBA

Chris Paul is one of the brightest stars in the National Basketball Association, a must-see player with the New Orleans Hornets whose deft ball skills and eye-popping speed have attracted admirers all over the world.

I can't think of any NBA team over the last few years that lost three starters. And we replaced them basically with three guys who really haven't played in this league.

Draymond Green is one of the best in the league at grabbing a defensive rebound and starting the break.

Inch for inch, the 6-foot-3 Westbrook is the NBA's most sensationally talented player, a relentlessly explosive basket-attacker with a deadly pull-up jumper - a top-10 NBA player by any big-picture statistical measure from Player Efficiency Rating to Win Shares.

I have the mindset of a mid-level guy or a minimum guy. My path here wasn't expected: my path wasn't that I was going to the NBA and making $16 million a year. So I identify more with those guys, and I want to be a voice for them. I want to help them elevate their status in the league. That's my goal.

At the end of the day, I looked at my options. I wanted to be in the NBA. I wanted to pursue my dream. It was my choice. But sometimes, just for fun, I think about how it would've been if I'd stayed in college.

I really have to make sure that I'm staying true to who I am, and that I know my responsibilities to current N.B.A. players, to future N.B.A. players, to our past and retired N.B.A. Players.

You learn that the only thing you can control is being professional and staying focused. This is the NBA. There are a lot of things that you can't control.

And when you study the NBA, you realize and know that the NBA is never staying the same. It's always evolving, it's always changing.

My goal stays the same of wanting to be an NBA point guard.

During games, I love a Twitter-rocking dunk as much as the next NBA nut. But now, I'd slightly rather see a crowd-detonating (or crowd-silencing) 3-pointer, either off four or five whip-whip passes or (even better) off a steal and a one-on-two pull-up on a solo fast break. No shot in basketball can be more psychologically devastating.

What kid who was playing basketball didn't have the dream about going to the NBA? It's the biggest and final step.

Every time I'd ever stepped on a basketball court, AAU, middle school, high school, I always thought about the NBA.

The NBA is a predominately black league. And me kind of being the anomaly in that sense, I've always tried to commit myself to being an ally and taking those necessary steps.

But my contribution to these troubled times will be inciting white women of a certain age to sexually profile Black student athletes who'd really just like to make it to the NBA in peace.

I have the loving support of my girlfriend who still attends Wake Forest and is nearing graduation. She helps me cope with the everyday rigors of being an NBA player.

People put football players up there for being tough, but if you look at the schedule and the actual minutes played, NBA players are among the greatest athletes on the planet. There's no question about it.

I can remember back when I was getting ready for the NBA, going through media training, going to certain camps - they almost teach you to not say anything that will get you any backlash or not say anything out of the norm, and what you're saying could be true to yourself.

In the NBA, you always have to make the right decisions. You should feel free to live a normal life, but you really can't.

I grew up in the Northwest, so I was always a really big Sonics fan. I loved Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, a lot of those players who were really good through the '90s.

Major League Baseball has the best idea of all. Three years before they'll take a kid out of college, then they have a minor league system that they put the kids in. I'm sure that if the NBA followed the same thing, there would be a lot of kids in a minor league system that still were not good enough to play in the major NBA.

I keep in touch with all the guys that I was training with in Chicago during the pre-draft process; Nik Stauskas, Mitch McGary, Adrien Payne, and Dougie McDermott. We all got pretty close training together and we just keep tabs every now and then.

Scott Skiles is one of the best coaches in the NBA, someone I observe and learn from on a day-to-day basis.

I got to go to practice one day, shoot around, and rebound for LeBron James. That was still an unreal experience.