Larry Bird

I like being by myself.

It's been a journey, the NBA. It's taken me a lot farther than I ever expected.

When it gets down to it, basketball is basketball.

I'm a loner.

When I was a kid, I never thought about anything. Never had to think about where I was going to school or what I was going to do. I just lived minute to minute.

If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she'd get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don't mean she wouldn't pay the bank, but the children always came first.

I've been around a while. I kinda know these things.

I really don't like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me to have it.

When I was a kid, like 14 or 15, I played with the waiters from the hotel, 'cause that was the best game. And these guys, they'd let me play. And they were black guys.

The best players will play. That's the way it will always be.

I wasn't real quick, and I wasn't real strong. Some guys will just take off and it's like, whoa. So I beat them with my mind and my fundamentals.

The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was I really got irritated when they put a white guy on me.

I used to love the feeling of running, of running too far. It made my skin tingle.

I get homesick.

I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American.

Once you are labeled 'the best' you want to stay up there, and you can't do it by loafing around.

I don't know if I practiced more than anybody, but I sure practiced enough. I still wonder if somebody - somewhere - was practicing more than me.

What's better? Dogs or broomsticks? I mean will the world really ever know?

But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever.

It doesn't matter who scores the points, it's who can get the ball to the scorer.