It seems like more of our superstar-type players now just want to score a ton of points, and if a win comes, it’s great, and if it don’t, it don’t. I still like the team game. I like the ball movement.
People always say, “Why are San Antonio and Detroit so hard to beat?” Well, if you look at their teams, you never really hear much out of their players, you never hear them causing trouble, they’re tied in as a unit. It’s no secret why they’re good. Everybody on their teams sacrifice for one another. They don’t care who scores the points, as long as they win, and that’s the reason they’re there every year. I think other teams are starting to look at them and say, “That’s the way you do it.”
We really haven’t had our whole team. But we do have a deep team. We have very good players. Once they settle in and get going, they’re going to be fine. As the season goes on, I think we’ll continue to get better and we can sneak up on a lot of teams.
Be patient. I never was a patient man. I want everything to happen right now. Like I said a while ago, if there’s trash to be picked up, let’s pick it up, get it over with, get on with the next thing.
I think I’m just a shy person at heart. I always have been. Even when I was small. I hated to walk into buildings or restaurants where other people were at. Even waiting for the school bus to get on that. If I was the first one to get on the school bus, fine. But walking on with a bunch of people always bothered me. It’s been like that my whole life.
They were never home. My dad worked at a piano factory when I was young, then he worked construction, and when he worked construction, he’d leave on a Sunday night and come back on a Friday night. My mom worked two jobs, so she was in and out. But she always had dinner ready for us.
She came to all of our games. My dad wasn’t into it much.
The people used to call me “The Hick from French Lick” all the time. I think somebody wrote it in college.
I didn’t have any heroes. My goals were just to try to be the best player on my high school team. I ended up doing that. Then I got to college, and I thought, maybe I could be the best player on this team.
I’m not into trophies. I never was. When I was younger and I won a trophy, I just wanted to take it into the house and show my mom and dad, because they loved trophies. But the next day, I’d go, “Get that thing out of here.” That’s sort of the way I am now.
When someone says now, “Gosh, in college, you guys won 33 in a row,” I never thought about it like that. Then you start thinking, “33 games,” that is a lot of games. For us to go 33 and lose the last game to Magic (1), that’s pretty remarkable.
Everybody wanted to beat the Celtics, and we knew that, and it made us better.
I think the hate was more from the Lakers’ side because for so many years, they were never able to defeat them in a championship series. Then when me and Magic got together, they carried that with them. They wanted to be the first team to beat the Celtics, and they ended up doing it.
Eighty-six was definitely our best team. At the beginning of the season, I felt the way things were going and the depth that we had on our team, if we stayed healthy, I didn’t think anybody in the league could beat us. And they didn’t.
When Michael first came into the league and we played them in the playoffs, we knew one guy wasn’t going to beat all of us. We’d say, “If he gets 40, let him get 40, it’s no problem. If he gets 50, it’s no problem. Just don’t let somebody else step up and get 20, 25.”
That’s still one of the best performances I ever saw (2), because we actually tried to defend him, and we couldn’t. It was horrible.
Wayne Gretzky. Michael Jordan. Right now, Peyton Manning to me is incredible the way he handles himself, the way he goes about his business, the way he prepares himself for work. [Tom] Brady from New England taking less money so he can get the players around him to protect him. That, to me, is what sports is all about.
(1) – Magic Johnson and Michigan State defeating Indiana State in the NCAA title game.
(2) – Michael Jordan’s 63-point game against Boston in the playoffs.
