Speaker 1: Every kid. Every person has the ability to put one
Speaker 1: foot in front of the other. So like if you're saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna climb Mount Everest, you're at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the mountain and you look up and you're going, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna go on Mount Everest, right, But if you
Speaker 1: break it down into sections and you just one foot
Speaker 1: in front of the other, one step at a time,
Speaker 1: next thing, you know, you at the top of the mountain.
Speaker 1: It's just a matter of what's important to you and
Speaker 1: what's important to you. For whatever reason, I didn't feel
Speaker 1: good about myself if I wasn't doing everything I could
Speaker 1: to be the best version of myself. If I felt
Speaker 1: like I left anything on the table, it would eat
Speaker 1: away at me. I wouldn't be able to look myself
Speaker 1: in the mirror. The Mama mentality simply means trying to
Speaker 1: be the best version of yourself. That's what the mentality means.
Speaker 1: It means every day you know, you're trying to become better,
Speaker 1: and it's a constant quest. It's an infinite quest. So,
Speaker 1: starting at the age of two, when I first started
Speaker 1: playing the game, and on and on on, I always
Speaker 1: ask questions. I always try to get better every single day,
Speaker 1: learn more. You know a lot of things I learned
Speaker 1: by being just being around the game, right, So by
Speaker 1: the age of six, I was already strategizing versus other
Speaker 1: six year olds. I just constantly looked for things to
Speaker 1: learn from and you know, very observant. Everything that I've
Speaker 1: learned from the game of basketball, I've carried it over
Speaker 1: into life. You know, like basketball has helped me be
Speaker 1: a better person, a better friend. Well, because there's life
Speaker 1: lessons that are within the game, like communication, like unselfishness,
Speaker 1: like attention to detail, and empathy and compassion, like all
Speaker 1: those things are in the game, and as an athlete,
Speaker 1: if we are aware of those things, it helps us
Speaker 1: become better human beings. If your job is to try
Speaker 1: to be the best basketball player you can be, to
Speaker 1: do that, you have to practice. You have to train, right.
Speaker 1: You want to train as much as you can, as
Speaker 1: often as you can. So if you get up at
Speaker 1: ten in the morning, train at twelve, train for two hours,
Speaker 1: twelve to two. You have to let your body recover,
Speaker 1: so you eat, recover whatever you get back out, you train,
Speaker 1: start training again at six, train from six to eight, right,
Speaker 1: and now you go home you shower, your dinner, you
Speaker 1: go to bed, you wake up and do it again. Right,
Speaker 1: those are two sessions right now, imagine you wake up
Speaker 1: at three, you train at four, you go four to six,
Speaker 1: come home, breakfast, relax, So sola la lah. Now you're
Speaker 1: back at it again, nine to eleven. Right, you relax,
Speaker 1: and now all of a sudden you're back at it again.
Speaker 1: To the four. And now you're back at it again.
Speaker 1: You know, seven to nine. Look how much more training
Speaker 1: I have done by simply starting at four, right, And
Speaker 1: so now you do that, and as the years go on,
Speaker 1: the separation that you have with your competitors and your
Speaker 1: peers just grows larger and larger and larger and larger
Speaker 1: and larger. And by a year five or six, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what kind of work they're doing in the summer,
Speaker 1: they're never going to catch up because they're five years behind.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense to get up and start your
Speaker 1: day early because you can get more work. I can
Speaker 1: if I start earlier, I can train more hours. And
Speaker 1: I know the other guys aren't doing it because I
Speaker 1: know what their training schedule is, right, So I know
Speaker 1: if I do this consistently over time, is that the
Speaker 1: GAP's just gonna winden and win and win and win
Speaker 1: and win, and they won't be able to get that back.
Speaker 1: So to me, it was just common sense. I'm like thinking,
Speaker 1: how can I get an advantage? Oh, start earlier, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do that. It's just a matter of what's important
Speaker 1: to you and what's important to you. For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel good about myself if I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: everything I could to be the best version of myself.
Speaker 1: If I felt like I left anything on the table,
Speaker 1: it would eat away at me. I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to look myself in the mirror. So the reason why
Speaker 1: I can retire now and be completely comfortable about it
Speaker 1: because I know that I've done everything I could to
Speaker 1: be the best basketball player I could be. And so
Speaker 1: you can't leave any stone on turn. You can't short
Speaker 1: change yourself like that. You're not cheating anybody but yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're tired, you're literally this far away from
Speaker 1: the line. Why would you not go that extra to
Speaker 1: touch the line?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So if I let them get away with that, right,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, he starts, maybe achieve something over here, right,
Speaker 1: not give his best over here? Not give his best
Speaker 1: over here. Then as years go on, he's not going
Speaker 1: to reach his full potential because he's been taking.
Speaker 2: These little shortcuts that just add up up, add up,
Speaker 2: add up, And you can't let that happen. Our job
Speaker 2: as teachers, as mentors, as inspirers, it's our responsibility to
Speaker 2: hold them accountable to those things.
Speaker 1: Whatever you're doing at that moment is what you're doing
Speaker 1: at that moment, you know. It's like, that's where the
Speaker 1: obsessiveness is, having the attention to detail for the action
Speaker 1: that you are performing at the time you're performing it.
Speaker 1: And if you can have that kind of focus, you
Speaker 1: can't help but to have a certain level of obsession
Speaker 1: or attention to detail, to be unyielding, like you're always
Speaker 1: going after it, always going after, always going after it.
Speaker 1: And if there's a challenge that ensues, oh good, I
Speaker 1: want to see how I stack up to that. So
Speaker 1: you go after and you go after it. It's fun.
Speaker 1: It's like you get a chance to compete against opponents
Speaker 1: and you get a chance to see where you stack
Speaker 1: up against them. It's like I want to see, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not good enough today. If that that's fine, now,
Speaker 1: I'll be good enough the next time I see you though,
Speaker 1: you know, and you get a chance to always measure
Speaker 1: yourself and it's it's just fun to do that. So
Speaker 1: I guess that's where relentlessness comes from. Whatever moments occur, good, bad,
Speaker 1: or indifferent, I can use those moments to propel me forward,
Speaker 1: use those as fuel to help me be a better player. Well.
Speaker 1: Losing to the Celtics in the finals in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, I mean that was tough. It was brutal.
Speaker 1: Had night in the hotel room after we lost, just
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, I may never win another championship like
Speaker 1: I might have, just like this is it. It's too
Speaker 1: hard to get back here. Maybe it's not in the
Speaker 1: cards to win another one. And so I go through
Speaker 1: that night of being mad, and then the next morning
Speaker 1: I wake up and then start thinking, nah, I gotta
Speaker 1: fix this. So where did it go wrong? You know?
Speaker 1: Why did we lose? Or we weren't tough enough? Okay,
Speaker 1: we weren't tough enough. Whose responsibility is that?
Speaker 2: To me?
Speaker 1: The team tough? It's mine? So now I have to
Speaker 1: start figuring out how I'm gonna lead this team differently,
Speaker 1: so to make sure that when we get to the finals,
Speaker 1: the next time. We were tough and ready for this challenge.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's that's how you bounce back from
Speaker 1: those moments. It was hard man it because the achilles
Speaker 1: injury is the worst injury for an athlete. It's like
Speaker 1: the worst, It's like the kiss of death. And when
Speaker 1: I ruptured my achilles, I knew what happened. I knew
Speaker 1: the severity of the injury, and I didn't know if
Speaker 1: I was gonna come back from it, like this is
Speaker 1: it like my career could be over right now? Well,
Speaker 1: what I did is, you know, I went home and
Speaker 1: I was just really angry, and I was angry. I
Speaker 1: was mad, I was angry. I worked so hard for
Speaker 1: us to get to the playoffs and to have a
Speaker 1: chance to win another championship, and then this happened. So
Speaker 1: I had a lot of anger, and then from the anger,
Speaker 1: and then I was sad, and then you start feeling
Speaker 1: bad for yourself and then you say, all right, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm done being a baby. Okay, what am I going
Speaker 1: to do now? Because I can't sit here and give up.
Speaker 1: That's not an option. So now what it's a process.
Speaker 1: You look at process. What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: What can I control surgery or do the surgery, come
Speaker 1: out of the surgery, recover from there. Physical therapy. Okay,
Speaker 1: physical therapy, piece by piece by piece by piece by piece.
Speaker 1: Start running back on the court. And so I broke
Speaker 1: things down into sections and said, okay, I'm gonna focus
Speaker 1: on resting right now, this is it. I'm going to
Speaker 1: focus on moving my toes and then walking and then
Speaker 1: so you look at every challenge, at every step, and
Speaker 1: that's how you're able to be resilient and come back
Speaker 1: from these things. Every kid, every person has the ability
Speaker 1: to put one foot in front of the other.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So like if you're saying, okay, I'm going to climb
Speaker 1: Mount Everest, you're at the bottom of the mountain and
Speaker 1: you look up and you're going, I'm not gonna golib
Speaker 1: Mount Everice, Right, But if you break it down into
Speaker 1: sections and you just one foot in front of the other,
Speaker 1: one step at a time, next thing you know, you're
Speaker 1: at the top of the mountain. Came back from the
Speaker 1: Achilles and I was fine into the next year. I
Speaker 1: fracture my knee. Right, It's like, here we go again.
Speaker 1: Come back from that next year, tear my shoulder. Here
Speaker 1: we go again. Right. But if I looked at those
Speaker 1: things in totality, it'd be depressing. But if I look
Speaker 1: at it as just the facts, this is it happened.
Speaker 1: Can't do anything about it. It happened. Now, what are you
Speaker 1: going to do? One step at a time. As time
Speaker 1: goes on, I'm sitting there seventy eighty years old, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be wondering if I could have come
Speaker 1: back from this injury. I don't want to wonder. I
Speaker 1: want to find out. I want to see if the
Speaker 1: critics are out there saying he's done, he'll never come back.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're right, maybe you're not, but let's find out.
Speaker 1: I think the greatest fear that we face is ourselves. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's it's not anything that's external
Speaker 1: or anything that's superficial. I think the greatest fear you
Speaker 1: face is yourself because you know, we all have dreams,
Speaker 1: and it's very scary sometimes to accept the dream that
Speaker 1: you have. Scarier still to say, okay, I want that.
Speaker 1: It's scary because you're afraid that if you put your
Speaker 1: heart and soul into it and you fail, then how
Speaker 1: you're going to feel about yourself? Right? So, being Fearless
Speaker 1: means putting yourself out there and going for it no
Speaker 1: matter what. Go for it, not for anybody else, but
Speaker 1: for yourself. Dance beautifully in the box that you are
Speaker 1: comfortable dancing in. Right, So, like everybody's box is different.
Speaker 1: My box was to be extremely ambitious within the sport
Speaker 1: of basketball. Your box it's different to mine. Right. Every
Speaker 1: kid here has her own box. But doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: your box isn't as beautiful as mine. Right, everybody has
Speaker 1: their own. It's your job to try to perfect it
Speaker 1: and make it as beautiful up a canvas as you
Speaker 1: can make it. And if you have done that, then
Speaker 1: you have lived a successful life. You have lived with
Speaker 1: Mamba mentality. Right. So it doesn't mean you have to
Speaker 1: go out here and do all of these crazy things.
Speaker 1: I'll have to be like this person or that person. No,
Speaker 1: what are you comfortable being? What it is that? What
Speaker 1: is it that you want to do with your life?
Speaker 1: And once you have that, then you try to live
Speaker 1: it to the best of your ability. My vision of
Speaker 1: what my goal is changed drastically as I got older.
Speaker 1: So like as a kid, I said, I want to
Speaker 1: be the best ever. Right, And now you go through
Speaker 1: your life and everything you do is try to be
Speaker 1: the best ever, be the best ever, be the best ever.
Speaker 1: And as you get older, you start understanding that those
Speaker 1: things are very superficial things, right, and everybody has a
Speaker 1: different opinion about it. No matter what you do, I
Speaker 1: can win twenty championships, there's always an opinion on who's
Speaker 1: the best. Everybody has different opinions, And so I started
Speaker 1: to really kind of understanding maybe that's not the important thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe the important thing is to, you know, how do
Speaker 1: we as a team grow? How do I help my
Speaker 1: teammates be better? So that was the first change for me,
Speaker 1: and then as I got older, still it became more
Speaker 1: about how are you inspiring others right to find themselves?
Speaker 1: That is the ultimate championship. So how do you use
Speaker 1: your passion and use that to inspire somebody else to
Speaker 1: create their passion and then how can they pass that
Speaker 1: on to the next person.
Speaker 2: That is true success.