Going in a different direction from the team, and the arrival of Chris Bosh:
"Chris came in as a rookie, seeing him being a young excited guy, he was an ACC guy so I took to him and he deserved being the feature guy here. He did. It was just the way things worked out as that. He was developing, young, up-and-coming and you can see who he is now. They wanted him to grow and flourish and I understood that. There were never any bad feelings toward the organization or him. It's a business decision and that's the way it goes sometimes. I get it. I think the fans sometimes, may not understand that but it kind of came off as I didn't want to be here. That's not what it was. It was moving in different directions. At some point, people will see that. It worked out. I was able to go somewhere else and do what I needed to do and Chris was able to grow, flourish and become a perennial all-star."
In order to "let it go" does the Raptors franchise need to reach a higher level of success than they had with him?:
"I don't know. I think it takes for people to understand what it's all about, what actually happened. They look at me as the person that hates Toronto, and I love Toronto to death. I don't know. [As someone] who didn't want to be here. It wasn't that, they were just moving in another direction and they felt Chris Bosh was the way they wanted to go. I was like, 'Hey I understand that.' I didn't want to be a problem in the locker room, which I guess everybody thought that I would be. No, I was encouraging him and kind of helping him learn what it takes to handle himself on and off of the court as the go-to guy, as the marquee name and I think it's really helped him today."
The player Bosh has turned out to be:
“I knew he had it. He definitely had a potential. That's why I think they chose to make that decision, hoping that he'd grow into the guy that he is today. He was a smart kid, he really wanted to get better, wanted to learn and I'm happy for him."
On the infamous John Thompson interview:
"It's unfortunate that it happened that way. It wasn't even about that. It was about playing in the summer. It was about working out.”
Was Thompson interview footage edited wrong?:
“It was edited totally wrong. It's just crazy. The question was about the preparation in the summer and how I go about it. I said some people have to work a lot harder, train a lot harder in the summer to fine tune their game. I put my time in all year, I don't try to work out as hard in the beginning of the summer as everyone else would do for the rest of the summer. The middle and to the end of the summer is when I would start putting my work in, but it came out as I wasn't trying hard in the game. How the hell could I not try hard in the game when I'm one of the focal points of the team, here and everywhere I played? It just did not make sense to me. I think that's where the whole misconception started because it was like, 'Oh I didn't play hard in the game,' the question was how did I approach my summer workouts, you know? So, it was just crazy."
VC: "One day, everybody will understand"
Reply With Quote
James Ballswin (Realizar) wrote:
