Competitive Level Quotes

Andre Sa is playing close to his potential - maybe even above it.

The NBA is not for everybody. And looking from the outside in like I did last year, it seems so easy from just watching, but on the court it is a whole different level.

Football is football; I don't care if you're doing it in Division II, NAIA, or in the SEC or anything in between.

The players have competed on the level the last 25 or 30 years are always going to be the players that compete at a high level. These guys practice hard, they work on their game, they still hit the ball extremely well.

We were pretty darn good - fit and ready to play - but today's level is different. Those ground strokes are ever so much faster, coming back at you at a pretty good speed. Footwork-wise, you've got to be ready to hit that next shot. It's a tough time.

People think that the Club World Cup is an easy competition, but it's not.

I wouldn't say I'm the best player. On the competitive level, I am the best competitor. I don't think there's anybody like me. I play my heart out on both ends of the floor, and I give my all.

I mean no offence, but we know that the French league is not the same as the Spanish or English league, where there's more difficulty.

In any football I have played in - and I have played in League One and as an international at the World Cup - the bare minimum is running around and showing the desire for the shirt. Then, the higher you go up the leagues, your football takes control of that.

Dudes are coming at me every day; I'm playing different positions on the defensive end. I'm really working on that, because that's the next level. In the league, everybody can dribble.

Nothing against the Olympics. I played in 2012 and it was an incredible experience. It's different for tennis players than for swimmers and track and field athletes. That's the pinnacle of their sport and not so much the pinnacle of tennis.

I don't think Gladbach are on the same level as Arsenal.

We have played a very good side, playing at the sort of level we are aspiring to. We need to come up a couple of levels ourselves because at the moment we are not there.

When I was younger I just used to get the ball and take on all the players because I was bigger and stronger. You cannot do that in the Premier League. You are playing against men.

There's a lot of guys out there that can play at this level, and sometimes they might be discouraged because they come from a small school or a tough situation.

Athletics at the highest level is a sport within a sport.

The caliber of play in professional football compared to college is better and everybody knows it. They don't realize how much better. What a giant leap forward in the ability of talent level, the speed, and even the grasp of what you are trying to do. There is no other distractions before the players.

I'm not knocking the other sports; I love other sports. There's a competitive and a technical level of them that I won't understand, probably, to a certain extent, but I've done a lot of other sports competing on college teams, and there's just nothing like fighting.

That's what people don't understand, that in the NBA these are the best 450 players in the world, in the game of basketball, are in the NBA.

I think college prepared me at a really high level. High school, you can take some plays off on the defensive end. Not on purpose, but if your man gets tired, you can rest a little bit. But once you get to college, and especially in the NBA, you can't do that. Even if my man gives the ball up, I'm on help side, helping my team out.

It takes a very tough man to play defensive line at any level of football, but to be able to do it on a Division 1 level, or a professional level, it takes that intensity, that aggression, and you have to be tough.

I didn't play JV because I went straight to varsity and started as a 10th grader - that was back in the day when you could not play varsity as a ninth grader. I went right from playing junior high football to varsity.

I'm confident that no matter what game comes out, I'll be able to play at a top competitive level.

I guess when people ask what is the biggest transition to the NBA from college, it is definitely defense and the mental part.

I have enough confidence at the moment to say that I have the potential to play at the same level as Arjen Robben or Franck Ribery.