What is the mentality that when you get - alright you got twenty, you got 30.
I'm going 40, now I'm going 50,
now I'm going 60.
I was in New York when you got the 60.
I'm sitting here watching it and I'm like, "Yo, he's not stopping.
He don't look like he want to stop.
He still want to give 100 if he can." Like, where does that mentality come from?
Where do you see most guys? 30, 40.
And they kind of chill out, like, “All right, I got this.”
- Yeah. No, it's a competition.
My mission is to destroy you.
It's not, you know, I mean, like, I don't say, you know, like we're playing.
I'm not stopping at 30.
Like I'm keep going to you figure out something else to do.
That New York game -
I knew D'Antoni's philosophies and never the double guy that's hot
because he always thinks they're going to cool off eventually.
- Yeah.
Right, so I understood that.
So once I got a rolling, I knew that was going to be the case.
But like Andrew Bynum, we just lost the game before
he got an injury against Memphis. Right?
So I'm like, we just lost to the Celtics in ‘08.
We think we got Andrew. It's going to make a big difference for us.
Now he goes down. We know how long he's going to be out for.
The team was a little deflated.
I was pissed off, you know, I mean, because it's like,
“No, we're winning the championship this year. Come hell or high water.”
My guys, we're down and going into New York - big game.
I said, all right,
I got to send a message to my guys and say, “No, listen, we're doing this.
I understand it's hard. He went down, but damn it, we're getting it done.”
- Yeah.
- So it was important to get into that mindframe of, “No, nothing matters.
I don’t want to talk to nobody, I don’t want to see no celebrities on the sideline.
Don't dap me. Don't say hi to me.
I don't care about none of y’all tonight.”
- You just focus.
- That was it.
- One of your moments -
my favorite moments of you is
you come off the bench for the Lakers and you make the All-Star team. You play in -
I think it's Madison Square Garden and you're playing against the Bulls
Michael Jordan like that was one the best
All-Star Games I've ever seen in the history of the game.
Like what was - I want to know how you felt about like that moment. You're going
against your idol who's on the other team. You you get a chance to -
you thinking that Eddie Jones and Nick Van Exel and Shaq they automatically finna
make the All-Star Game and you make it too. To be a part of that
that group like what did that moment like feel for you?
It was it was a huge honor.
I mean you see the votes tallying up you know like, “Wait a minute, I'm a starter
on this team? I don’t start my own team.” you know and like
it became very serious to me because I didn't want to make it seem like
I was just some bubblegum player. - Yeah.
Popularity got me in there. I was like, “Hold on - no.
I can hoop.”
I wanted to prove like, “No, I belong here sort of thing.
And, you know, the hype of going up against Mike - it was
“Okay,
Let’s go, show me.”
Like, “I've been watching you play my whole life. Show me.
I want to see this.
Everybody calling you
Black Jesus and all this other crap like you’re going to have to show me, man.”
And I went out there and we went head up and, you know,
I think his respect and appreciation for me really grew that day
because you saw on the biggest stage, I didn't shy away from that confrontation.
I looked forward to that confrontation.
And, you know, George Karl, which, you know, later in years became my motivation.
We played against Denver's to never let them win the playoff series
because he didn't play me the whole fourth quarter of that game.
- I remember that
- Because me and Mike went at it, you know, for three quarters.
And then in the fourth quarter, crowd's waiting for me to get back in there.
He benches me the whole fourth. - I remember that.
- And it was like -
okay,
- Every time I see you, you getting this work. - It’s on sight. It’s on sight.
So when we played the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs.
It was like, “Hold on.
No, you're never - you will never beat me in a playoff series.
- All your wins got you to blame for this.
I think the All-Star Game in general needs a little revamping because
it used to be competitive. It used to be competitive and like,
you know, fans want to see the best pickup game in the world.
That's what this is.
They don't want to see you running up
and down and dunking and doing all this crazy like - they want to see what happens
when you get this collection of best basketball players on the planet
and they play and they go head up against each other.
- Yeah.
- I mean, guys play harder at a pickup game in UCLA
It ain’t billions of people watching. - Definitely do. Definitely do.
- They’ve got to turn it up. - I think the All-Star Game needs a little changing.
I always loved competing in them.
I didn't lose many of them. - You was one of the ones.
Me and CP used to talk all the time like, “Hold on -”
Like I don't think me and CP, when we played together in the All-Star Game,
I don't think we've ever lost a game.
And we used to look at each other say, “Okay, let’s go.”
Yeah, fourth quarter. “Let's go get ‘em.”