Thank you to St. Mary’s
My team put this together for me so check it out. I really appreciated the day.
Help for Haiti
I'm not one for jumping on the donation bandwagon, but people, I'm asking you if you could to donate to the Haiti fund. That is just a ridiculously sad situation and anything you can do to help, would be greatly appreciated. I can not fathom the chaos, terror, and sadness on that tiny island. I don’t know what the body count is, but please even if it’s a dollar it will go a long way.
There are a lot of ways to donate, but one easy way to donate $10 is to text "HAITI" to "90999" and it will be charged to your cell phone bill.
Phoenix, Nash, Portland, and more to come
Well readers, I'd have to say the writing bug bit me again. Sorry about that lapse, sometimes it just happens like that. Where do I start. I guess I'll just start from the beginning, no j/k.
Being here in Phoenix is truly a blessing. I have had so much fun just being on the court, trying to get better every day. The guys on this team, the staff, the front office people, they really are class acts.
Some questions I always get are how is it back home with the ticket situation and how is it playing with Steve Nash?
Playing at home for me has been divine timing. Being newly married, all I do is spend time with my wife and with my close friends. It's funny, people said marriage is work but if you truly Love that person it's not work at all. But anyway, sorry I got off track.
Being at home and tickets. I'd have to say that it hasn’t been bad at all because people see me more than just at games. They just take turns, plus most of my people already had tickets so that helps.
The big question: playing with Steve Nash. Well, I'll say this, I truly try and pick his brain every chance I get. He is a two-time MVP and easily, without a doubt, the best floor general I've ever played with or seen. His basketball IQ has to be the highest I've ever seen. The game, at times because of the way he plays, seems so slow and he just takes what the defense gives him. It's our job to be in our spots where we're threats to make a play. The way he takes care of his health is so disciplined. Maybe in 5 or 6 years I'll start on exactly what he's doing, but being here I've really changed my diet around a lot and I have to say I haven’t felt better.
On another subject, I do miss the city of Portland. I'll be back during the summer, of course, rolling in my Lincoln, going to the same ole spots, playing pickup at PSU and University of Portland, doing pilates at Nike, and making sure I keep a watchful eye over the beautiful city from my high-rise.
I've learned a lot about myself this year and we're only halfway through. It's been an experience that I can definitely talk to my friends about all summer.
I have to take a time out and just say that, in all honesty, I can not thank the people who support me either on or off the court enough (I don’t mind if you don’t like my game), whether you’ve supported my AAU team, the Bull Dogs, the MS Foundation, or if you still have my bobble head up in your store -- I truly appreciate.
The NBA and this game for us is short lived and these memories that we have of each other - good or bad - are things that we can always talk about. As I sit on a plane typing this, I can only think about 3 things:
1. I think about thanking God every second for even having the opportunity to be out there playing
2. I think about how can I help our team get better and how can I improve on my game
3. And then I think about what an experience I'm going through, what an opportunity. And if I were to look back to when I was growing up pretending to be Jordan or Barkley on the outside courts, maybe somewhere someone has the updates on 2k7 where I have the 3pt shot above my head and they love using my guy to rain tre balls on unsuspecting opponents, lol.
But anyways people, thanks again for reading. I'm going to keep up, maybe give you guys a weekly blog again telling you about what's going on a little more. It'll help me work on my writing, which I love to do, and it’ll keep the people who read my stuff an inside scoop (sorta) on whats going on.
So, see ya next week.
Resolutions
Well, we're a week into the New Year. I know a lot of people say they're going to eat better, work out more and lose weight. I don't really make resolutions, but I do want to continue to eat healthy and take good care of my body by not eating dairy, no sodas, and definitely try and stay far away from fast food.
So tell me if you guys make resolutions and how you're doing on them so far.
Avatar
I've been meaning to blog about Avatar, which I say is the best movie ever. I don't even want to hear about it.
What do you think?
Make it a great New Year
I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.
"When you look backwards you take your eyes of your goals ahead of you."
My new year's resolution is to appreciate every day and have fun growing up and around the people I love and care for.
I hope your new year is great.
All Night Long
More movie and TV comments
Since I love watching good movies and great TV shows, I will make a comment other than about Tarantino. Man, Guy Ritchie makes some legit movies. The last movie I saw of his was Lock Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. I liked it. I liked it a lot. But the one I loved was Revolver. So much deeper a movie than I thought it would be. It was great. I stayed in my car after a long road trip just to watch the end of the movie. Great movie. Great, great movie.
Also guys, I've seen literally all those action kung fu movies. I own over 500 DVDs. I would have to say I'm a bit of an action-sci-fi-comedy-kung fu movie enthusiast. The last movie that I'd have to say was legit and that I was pleasantly surprised by was Jet Li's first action movie, the Tai Chi Master dubbed in English (not a big deal). It was a good story for as old as it was. I was impressed by the speed of the action sequences. I mean, I could probably write a book about every movie I've seen and critique them all. Do you think If I did that that people would actually buy it off the shelf or what if I made a website just dedicated to my opinion on all the movies I've seen almost like Rotten Tomatoes?
Well, I'll leave that to you guys to decide, but the other thing that I've really started to love is HULU. God bless HULU. People, if you haven’t been there you need to go check out the website before it costs money, lmao. I only watch 4 shows on there and I'll explain why I watch each one.
30 ROCK - Come on, if you like The Office and you like good humor you'll love this show. It took me a while to watch a couple episodes because I felt like I was cheating on The Office but let me tell you that I'm now hooked on 30 Rock, too.
NARUTO: SHIPPUDEN - ok, ok. Everyone is like "Why in the world is the big ole 6’11" black dude watching English-dubbed anime?" Well, for those who haven’t ever seen the show, I will tell you that this is one of the best kung fu action cartoons I've ever seen. My good friend BIG ROSS in Chicago got me started this summer on the show. We had a kung fu comic book nerd showdown and this was the only section that I lost at (I dominated the marvel section). So, thanks BIG ROSS for getting me hooked and if you like a good story line, this is it. But caution: you'll want to start from the beginning and go through. You don’t wanna miss any of the good fights.
THE BIGGEST LOSER - if you don't watch this you're not a red-blooded American. I mean, come on. Every week is like an hour of the most dramatic workouts, weight loss, and emotional talks. I laugh sometimes about the stuff they do because they scream and yell and cry and get so emotional. At first I didn’t understand why until my wife explained that it was a deeper meaning and that those people were breaking down barriers inside themselves. So I stopped laughing and, no lie, on some episodes I got close to busting out the tissues, lmao, jk, jk! But kudos to all those people for trying to better themselves. I know all of America is proud of them.
THREE SHEETS - if you don’t watch this you must not like beer, wine, champagne, liquor or watching drunk people on TV. This is a great show. It's hilarious. Watch it. That’s all I have to say.
About the 3-ball
Hey, to the readers still there waiting for me to blog, I have to say thank you so much for being patient with me. The transition to this new team new club has been -- for lack of a better word -- an adventure.
I love every minute that I'm with this team. From the minute I signed here I had a great feeling that this was were I was supposed to be and I've definitely matured as a player and as a man. The game is just fun again and having the opportunity to play I cherish every second I'm out there.
But anyway, I have so many topics to talk about I just wanted to just give my thanks to everyone who reads this. You're appreciated. I'm gonna talk about the most asked question I get after every game: where did the 3 ball come from?
My first answer is behind the 3pt line, lol. The second answer is that I've worked hard on that for about 2-1/2 years. I started developing it when I came to Portland, never really used it, was more down low and it just wasn't in the offense.
When the last season was over I took 2 weeks off and got right back in the gym and started working on my game. I would spend 2 hrs in the wee hours of the morn and come back and strictly work on the 3 ball later in the day. All that hard work payed off so far and in this system it's my job to shoot. It's everyone's job to shoot, be a threat, be a scorer at all times and that’s why we've been successful so far. We play with 5 unselfish scorers.
So, to answer that question, my 3 ball came from lots of hours of hard work, the right situation, and from my teammates and their confidence in me.