The Sixth Man

by Andre Iguodala

But if I was going to have it, I was going to have to leave everything behind. I was going to have to cut loose every single thing that held me back.

But even when we’re at our most ungrateful, we still remembered that we were lucky to always have the lights on, to always have food in our home.

This is how we learned to handle opposition where I grew up. Directly. Head-on. And quickly.

They were really milestones of personal belief. Which means that they were moments when I had to believe in myself despite the fact that someone else was committed to making sure I didn’t.

The freedom to be unaware of racism simply doesn’t last long if you’re black.

So I grew up learning a balance. On the one hand, it was “Yes, ma’am. No, sir.” On the other hand, it was a deep sense that you simply couldn’t let people fuck with you.

You have to learn confidence. You have to own it. Or else you won’t survive.

He wasn’t perfect, but he had integrity and respect.

See, any kind of greatness takes work. Everyone knows that. But what fewer people understand is that work itself takes faith. You have to have faith that the work you’re doing will bring about results, otherwise you’ll lose interest.

The crowd was incredibly loud, and we could barely hear ourselves think, but I felt like it was my job to keep everyone calm and playing the way we knew how to play.

There are moments where something in us changes, something happens that determines the direction of our lives.

When you start to get and seize opportunities like that, the world begins to open up slowly for you. And once it does, it can never close again.

I shrugged it off. The internet, sports guys, media—they never know what they’re talking about. Just a lot of bullshit to get clicks.

A lot of people simply don’t like it when black kids feel powerful. It threatens them. Once a black person exhibits that they have no need for white approval, then suddenly all manner of hate and insults and threats come in.

There is so much dehumanization in big-money sports. A lot of people don’t want to hear it because of what we get paid, but money doesn’t change that fact. It really makes it worse.

You’re putting your body on the line, and no human body was meant to run up and down the court for eighty-two games.

just having someone treat me like a person rather than an object, really worked for me.

I was completely ignorant to the level of physical and mental discipline it took to remain in shape for the longevity of an NBA career.

There was no room for those moments of doubt. So I made no room for them.

Everything in my body told me that I could not do this. But everything in my will told me that I must do this. There was no choice. I would have to find it somewhere inside me.

there was a peacefulness to being so narrowly focused.

It was occurring to me that veterans played this game completely differently than rookies did. They seemed to get more done with less movement. I wanted to learn that.

“You’re a killer just like they’re a killer,” he would say. “So go out there and kill them.”

What I knew was work. And work became the container, the vehicle, for all the energy, frustration, resentment, and ambition these events triggered in me.

The reality is that this system of professional sports is set up to squeeze literally every last thing it can out of the horses. When that much money is at stake, for that many people, your personal health and well-being is going to take a back seat to their bottom line.

Defense doesn’t get you shoe contracts or TV commercials. So when a guy is really trying on defense, you know he’s really trying for his team.

was beginning to learn how to channel my attention, to put my sometimes overly active brain toward something useful.

Always pay attention and attention pays off.”

I could not push myself against my body. I had to align my will and the will of my body into one seamless machine.

But what most of us find after a while, and much to our surprise, is that even with all the cash and prizes, the question of purpose remains.

Hooping is free and simple. The work that goes into it is complicated and intense, but in the actual moments of play, there is some kind of, I didn’t know the word for it yet, but there was something there. A lightness. An elevation.

He stressed that the true job of an athlete was not to win but to rise to every occasion, give your best effort, and make those around you better as you did it.

My job wasn’t to come in and create offense. It was to come in and find where the offense lay. It was always there. I was to find it for our team, to uncover it and deliver it. And almost always it could be found through the movement of the ball.

I had to let my wife know that I appreciated how she puts up with me during the finals. Because as much as the regular season involves travel and commitments, the finals take over all aspects of your life in a much more complete way. There is no you left.

People were racist, but no one wanted to be called racist.

On the one hand, it’s just a game. But on a much deeper level, it can never be.

Steve Kerr had talked to us about this. This, in fact, was one of his most consistent messages: enjoy the moment, don’t beat yourself up too much about mistakes.

But we still have to live on Earth, don’t we? We still have to face challenges. They see us as basketball players and that’s all. But basketball is going to end one day for all of us.

you can tell who your real friends are by how they treat you when they need something from you and how they treat you when they don’t. I was happy to find during my injury that I had some good friends and some others who were not.

And you’re back in the game 100 percent. At home you’re in the game. In bed you’re in the game. On days off you’re only in the game. It consumes you. And you welcome it.

No one can predict when things are going to end. But every single one of us can predict that they will.

From youth-league coaches who drilled in you the fundamentals since you were five years old. Not just the fundamentals of the game, but the fundamentals of life. How to show up, how to push yourself, how to become something better than what anyone could have imagined. How to become what God has laid out for you.