People want athletes to cater to their image of what an athlete should be, but they also want them to fail so they can feel like their screwups are all right. If I make a priority shift, I'll make it because it's best for me.
I spoil a lot of people with my play. If you have three bad games in a seven-year career, people are going to point that out.
It's not uncommon for a big free agent to come to a new club with a big contract and not perform up to his standards.
It's really annoying for me. That's not what I'm playing for, to be the face of the NBA or to be this or that or to take LeBron's throne or whatever.
It's tough in the NHL; you have to produce on a high level. And everybody expects you to do it because you make a lot of money. And I never minded it. I always want to be that guy.
There is no excuse for a professional footballer not to be 100% fit.
Any time you sign a contract it means that you had a good season last year and that you need to improve yourself this season.
I'm not sure that an athlete is prepared to be a role model. He has a lot of attention paid to him that he shouldn't have, and then the athletes tend to think of themselves as better than they are.
Too often athletes think there's these norms that I have to fit into and there are people that I have to please.
Black athletes are always under more scrutiny.
I explain to athletes, you're supposed to be a well-oiled machine. You're supposed to be in better shape than the people watching you. You're supposed to be an unbelievable specimen of a human being. You have to treat your body different while you're performing.
I would say the most significant difference between modern-era receivers and previous receivers is the ones who were in my generation or earlier had to get a job after they got through playing. Today's player doesn't.
I'm not a machine. I don't see why people demand more of me than of other players.
I think the American sports culture has the idea that professional athletes need so much, like flying private planes, which obviously we don't, but that's the American sports culture when they think of the NFL and the NBA.
