It's hard to get people to overcome the thought that they have to take care of themselves first. It's hard to get players to give in to the group and become selfless as opposed to selfish.
It wasn't about the X's and the O's and the strategy; it was more about keeping 12 guys focused and committed to a task. That group dynamic, and then helping them to grow as people and basketball players.
When you go out on a football field, you are responsible for taking care of yourself. The more rules you get, the less players truly take care of themselves.
I want to be on a successful team, and I know that paying one or two or three players premium hurts your chances of being able to bring in extra talent.
'Authoring tools' are terrible; there is almost no software that can create closed captions for media players. And of course there is no training. TV captioning is bad enough, and this stuff is generally worse.
Am I an Apple bigot? No. I can critique their products and their customer service philosophy. But overall, they do better than any other player.
You can't say that being a fan is more serious, because players are trying to do better in order to get paid better.
The thing a player has to ask himself: 'Do you want to choose winning over standing out?' Dwyane Wade made that choice, and I don't think he gets enough credit.
The point, as I emphasize in the book, is not for players to become professionals, but rather to have innovative and creative ways of thinking about real problems as part of their intellectual toolkit.
Sure, sometimes guys pass you up in salary, and maybe it's a lesser player, but it's all based on what a team has as far as value in that person.
He would catapult you forward, and that was his intention with the Jazz Messengers. He would take young people with a potential and help them develop a voice as a player and as a writer.
I really believe the only thing you can control in those situations is what you do as a player but also how you interact with your teammates, which is critical.
I think younger players probably just think they are who they are-they don't think about coming out. Unless you're number one in the world, nobody cares, usually.
And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers.
As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.
I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
When I played, I never needed the spotlight, nor did I want it. I simply wanted to play baseball and be respected by my teammates and the opposing players.
At 49, I can say something I never would have said when I was a player, that I'm a better person because of my failures and disgraces.
I know that baseball players have certain rituals or habits that they develop, because sometimes it becomes somewhat superstitious if they get on a streak and want to do the same thing over and over again.
Now that I am much older, I have had a number of sax players tell me I was responsible for them playing sax. Some of them I have admired over the years.
It (proof by contradiction) is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.
