My last four years in Orlando, I was a really good player but I wasn't a full-time starter.
— J. J. Redick
At the end of every season I look in the mirror and ask myself what can I do better? Where did I screw up this year?
I would much rather invest in stocks, bonds, private equity and hedge funds than watches.
Player movement is good, and guys should be able to choose where they want to play.
I always talk about shooting being broken down into three things. You have to have some semblance of good form. The second part is repetition: doing things over and over again until you really develop a skillset. And then the third part is confidence. But for me, you can't have confidence without having that second part.
Nothing can prepare an 18-year-old for the fishbowl that is Duke basketball. So that was difficult.
My closet is my happy place.
Winning is really hard in this league.
As a U.S. History major, there is something very cool about being in cities, and walking the streets of Philadelphia or Boston or New York and seeing historical sites.
I know when I was a kid, I looked up to athletes. So, if an athlete spoke out on an important issue, then I was probably more likely to hear that opinion and to see that stance and recognize the importance of that.
You always look forward to the start of the regular season. It's like opening presents on Christmas morning.
I don't own a watch anymore. Literally, that was an addiction. I'm not afraid to admit that. It took me over. My possessions possessed me.
Twitter has now just become a bunch of angry voices. That for me, I had to detach from there.
With social media, I've never felt completely comfortable with it.
My mother is a nutritionist, so we always ate well.
I'm not naive - I think it's rare in the NBA every day to actually be able to enjoy being around the people you're working with.
I feel like I've been mentoring young guys for a long time.
When I come to the arena, my mind is on basketball, not thinking I'm walking a runway.
My second year in the league I played zip.
Some collectors do but no, I don't look at watches as an investment.
As we grow up and we're developing, our ego needs to be contained, otherwise we'd all be selfish two- and three-year-olds, screaming every time we didn't get our way.
I think my confidence and competitiveness - that will - comes from my mother. I always knew my mom loved me, and she always made me feel like I was - I don't want to say 'special' - but that I was capable of doing things. Before I ever shot a basketball or before I ever threw a baseball, I had confidence, and that was from my mother.
For me, I can only talk so much about basketball, and I get a little bored.
As you progress as a basketball player, the world around you becomes more and more chaotic. There's more talent, there are more distractions - and these are all factors that create a lack of control. By having a routine, by having habits that I can fall back on, it's my way of enacting control. It's the only thing I can control.
As late as my junior year, I was taking Italian at Duke because I thought I was going to have to go overseas and play. Then I had a great senior year and became a lottery pick.
For me, I spent four years at Duke, and I was 22 my rookie year. For a lot of guys, I was old as a rookie, but nothing could prepare me for the NBA, both on the court and off the court.
I'm very grateful to be able to give back.
I think it's important to have open lines of communication and I think the best lines of communication are two-way lines.
One of the reasons that the NBA is so good is NBA Twitter.
I hate to admit it, but anytime you're at a stoplight and your phone is within reach? You pick it up. It's become instinctual. Even if you put the phone down and walk out of the room, you're always aware of where it is. It's become an extension of you.
Nutrition is a big part of my life and it always has been.
As a professional athlete, the onus is on you to take responsibility.
I've been very fortunate to be on some great teams and in great locker rooms.
New Orleans has an incredible culture. Everybody brings up food first, but I realized there's a lot more to that in terms of music and art and people and history.
I'm not into trends, but more enduring classics and styles.
For the most part, someone who is in love with mechanical watches is not going to decide to wear a smartwatch over a mechanical watch.
Growing up, I didn't know anyone that was a watch collector or into watches, but I was always kind of curious about them. Before the NBA Draft, I knew I was going to get drafted, and I wanted to commemorate that by buying a watch.
I won't take a shot unless I think it's going to go in.
I'm not sure my own family liked me at Duke.
You want your kids to grow up in a world that's better than the one you grew up in. I'm not talking about my own family's wealth. I'm talking about the actual world and all the issues that we have.
Kind of making that leap from a team that wins occasionally to a team that wins the majority of the time, a lot of times just comes down with figuring out how tough it is to win, and then executing down the stretch to do it.
When I got done at Duke, I almost felt ashamed of it. I almost tried to distance myself from being the Duke guy.
It seems like you have to put so much into winning on the road and playing well on the road.
To be able to give back and be able to help people, it means a lot to me. I'm humbled by it, honestly.
We're going to have a generation of kids whose norm will be people just being addicted to their phones. And that's what scares me. The impact on my kids, I think about that daily. Like, what is this doing to me and my family?
I've been on teams where you literally don't talk to each other at dinner. Just six guys on their phones.
I have this personality where I'm all in on something or I'm off of it.
At the end of every season, I try to assess what I did well and what I didn't do well.
My parents always wanted me to do the right thing. My mom, I think her exact words were, 'You're not a chicken in the coop playing in the scraps, you're an eagle.' I was like, 'Oh, OK... ' But really, I've used that throughout my life.
I've certainly benefited from the three-point line and the emphasis on shooting them.
