Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.

How many times have your parents told you not to do things, and the next thing you know, you go do it? And you realized you shouldn't have done it.

It's a heavy duty to try to do everything and please everybody. My job was to go out there and play the game of basketball as best I can and provide entertainment for everyone who wanted to watch basketball. Obviously, people may not agree with that; again, I can't live with what everyone's impression of what I should or what I shouldn't do.

The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals and you can't let yourself be beat because of lack of effort.

Occasionally, Americans in large numbers are moved by a vanquished athlete's grief. Larry Bird with a towel over his head in 1979 comes immediately to mind. But more often, sports fans do the opposite - they delight in the desolation of a defeated archrival.

I love exercise, but I didn't join a single sports club as a student - I have no hand-eye coordination. Things like yoga are amazing, but anything with a ball just isn't for me.

It's that athlete's obsessiveness - the need to prove yourself and work harder than anybody else. I think it's what helped me do well in the theater.

Any football club, any person, any human being alive goes through adversity. The art of living life is to recover from that and respond to any challenges being thrown at you.