 |
| INSANE WORK ETHIC |
INSANE WORK ETHIC
as a leader of a team it's also your responsibility to elevate the rest of the guys you have to get them emotionally to want to be better you want you have to get them to an emotional space where they wake up every morning driven to be the best version of themselves and in practice for me it was a chance to drive them to challenge them and this is where you have to know your teammates because if it's late you just had a back-to-back practice the next day you show up guys don't feel like going through the motions don't feel like practicing it's important to know each and every one of them individually personally because then you know what nerve to touch and if practice is more intense and harder than a game seven will be then game seven will be easy but if it's not then that's when teams start folding into pictures i think the best way to prove your value is to work is to learn is to absorb to be a sponge you always want to outwork your potential as hard as you believe you can work you can work harder than that and that's what i try to do when i first came in league but you know basketball is such a direct competition sport that competitive nature the work ethic and curiosity because i asked a lot of questions i would always sit down and just ask questions about certain games that i studied growing up what actually happened there what did you feel then why i always dreamed as a kid that you know it was possible to score 80 or 1900. i always just like had a dream sometimes we lay down in bed and visualize things i'd imagine playing for the lakers and i would imagine what the uniforms look like i imagine we would be playing the smell of the arena and all sorts of stuff and i would see myself you know getting hot so you just keep dreaming and dreaming and dreaming and before i go to sleep i'm like at 120 points you know and so and so when you grow up downloading that into your brain over and over and over and then you know that summer i made a thousand shots a day a thousand [Music] they weren't just shots there were shots that you saw in that game there were specific shots something was coming out of the corner going to the pinch post footwork in the post coming off the screen it was very specific so when you download that into your system and go out in court and you're just executing things that you've done thousands of times before and you have that dream then that becomes possible rudy was one of my favorite films growing up after watching that film i come to understand if i could work that hard every day being blessed with the physical tools that i have what would my career be and i made a promise to myself from that day that i was going to work that hard every single day so that when i do retire i have no regrets and that was the most important thing for me so leave no stone unturned get better every single day and if i live that way then over time i'd have something that was beautiful and that was my philosophy it seems like a pretty simple one but you know if you live your life to just get better every single day and do that for 20 years what do you have basketball for me was the most important thing so everything i saw whether it was tv shows whether it was books i read people i talked to everything was done to try to learn how to become a better basketball player everything everything and so when you have that point of view then literally the world becomes your library to help you to become better at your craft at 13 years old i played the longer game because my game wasn't about being better than you at 13. it was to be better than you when the chips are really on on the line so when you played at 13 i would size you up and see what your strengths and weaknesses are how do you approach the game are you silly about it are you goofy about it are you good at it just because you're bigger and stronger than everybody else right or is there actually thought and skill that you put into it right and when i'd play i'd play to my weaknesses because when you're playing summer basketball there's so many games so there's not a lot of skill work being done so when are you going to get better right when you're playing in competition situations you're only playing to your strengths why because you want to win right so what i would do i always work on the things during those games that i was weak at left hand post game pull up jump shot right so i have a strategy and so then fast forward to when i'm 17 and my game is completely well-rounded and that player at 13 that i saw at 13 is still doing the same hit at 17. now you got a problem i see a lot of players take vacations with other players that are close friends just to take vacations or just hang out just to hang out i never did that [Music] why didn't you do that well because when i retired i didn't want to have to say i wish i would have done more i don't want that what were some of the factors you looked at on how to improve your game season after season the game itself was a complicated answer so there are very tactical things in terms of footwork and geometry of the court so you're looking at the court and looking at the 45 degree angles that the court is is shaped in and how it needs to operate that's one component to it so looking at spots on the floor where you can increase your efficiency right you can be on the wing but there's a certain spot on the wing that improves your angle to drive to the basket right so that sort of stuff footwork of the opposition looking at the emotion of the opposition their tendencies their weaknesses and all that stuff understanding the momentum of the game how to create momentum shifts where momentum shifts come from all this sort of stuff and then studying outside of that right looking at different industries looking at conductors looking at writers looking at actors and how they get into character and then how do they keep themselves in that mental space so looking at different different industries looking at nature itself and learning from that and how you can incorporate that into the game man it's it's a lot of studying what is the conversation like with your wife and kids to say listen this is what i'm doing how did that conversation go well with the kids is different so like the communication with our children is that pops is working hard this is the level of attention to detail you need to have in everything you do so it's setting the example same thing with my wife my wife's a stay-at-home wife it's the hardest job man so she works really hard at that i mean it's you know and so her attention to detail with that as well are examples for our children and then for my wife it's you know she's as competitive as i am she's just like listen man if you're going to be out here training eight hours a day if you're gonna spend nine months out of year away from your family you better win the championship but it's a balancing act and that's the thing that's important is understanding that we have to have so much energy because for like natalia and gianna when they were babies especially natalia because they was doing prime years and i go to practice and i i'd train and you know i'd play the game and i'd come home and i'd be sore and i'd be tired and she wants to go swimming she wants me to take her to the park she wants to just jump on my back or whatever the case may be you can't say i'm too tired i'm going to lay down that's not fair she don't know what the hell is going on right and if this was a game you'd suck it up and play i play games with the flu i play games with 102 degree fever man you can't do that all powerful you got to be on man like sometimes i fly back like i'd play a game to not miss my daughter's birthday i'd fly back be there for her birthday and then fly back with the team just to make sure i don't miss anything you gotta lead by example parents you gotta lead by example if you want your kids to do whatever it is they wanna accomplish in life we have to show them you can't [Music] you got to show them and that's what i tried to do competitiveness inside was like no i'm going to do something in the next 20 years that is better than these last 20. what i have to do now is make sure that the people that we bring in these obsessives that we bring in are challenging themselves to do the best job that they think they can do that's what i'm there for is for them to constantly look in the mirror and self-assess and challenge themselves if we have a project and you're saying okay i can do that that's not the project we want the projects that say i don't know if i can animate that i don't know how to write that story i don't know how to do that those are the things we want because through that curiosity you'll reach a level that you didn't think was possible what is your recruiting approach so if you're sitting down with me i'm somebody you really want you really want me on the team what's your approach to recruiting you want first place come play with me you want second place go somewhere else [Music] [Applause] mama mentality simply means trying to be the best version of yourself that's what the mentality means it means every day you're trying to become better it's a constant quest it's an infinite quest so starting at the age of two when i first started playing the game and on and on and on i always ask questions i always try to get better every single day at two i could dribble a basketball i could shoot a basketball on the nerf hoop at the house and i would go to practice with my father i would observe my father i'd sit and watch games with him i just constantly looked for things to learn from i'm very observant i think the greatest fear you face is yourself because you know we all have dreams and it's very scary sometimes to accept the dream that you have and it's scarier still to say okay i want that it's scary because you're afraid that if you put your heart and soul into it and you fail then how are you going to feel about yourself right so being fearless means putting yourself out there and going for it no matter what go for it not for anybody else but for yourself my goal is change drastically as i got older it's like as a kid i said i want to be the best ever and now you go through your life and everything you do try to be the best that would be the best everybody ever as you get older you start understanding that those things are very superficial things and everybody has a different opinion about it no matter what you do i can win 20 championships there's always an opinion on who's the best everybody has different opinions and so i started really kind of understanding maybe that's not the important thing maybe important thing is to how do we as a team grow how do i help my teammates be better so that was the first change for me and then as i got older still it became more about how are you inspiring others right to find themselves that is the ultimate championship so won five championships that's great another team won a championship this year team's gonna win a championship next year those things come and they go but what stays is how do you use your passion and use that to inspire somebody else to create their passion and then how can they pass that on to the next person that is true success dreams it should be pure i think a lot of times when we're born into this world we actually wind up going backwards and it seems like the more we mature the more responsible our dreams become the more governors we put on ourselves and our ability to dream so it's not a matter of pushing beyond the limitations or expectations it's really a matter of protecting your dreams protecting your imagination that's really the key and when you do that then the world just seems limitless