Baron Davis is LA to his core, so of course Dan had to meet with him on his home turf for a special LA-based episode of South Beach Sessions. Steeped in vulnerability, Baron dives into his life and career on a new level – from the streets to being an NBA All-Star. Baron cracks open his past - growing up in South LA surrounded by violence and abuse - detailing his journey through the care of his grandparents from poverty to one of the wealthiest schools in the country. Baron also holds nothing back about his chaotic time with the Clippers – all the behind the scenes drama and destruction created under Donald Sterling’s ownership. Join the members-only Business Inside the Game (BIG) community, founded by Baron Davis, at teambig.io. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This episode is brought to you by Marvel Studios' Captain America Brave New World. Starring Anthony Mackie as Captain America and Harrison Ford as President Ross. Don't miss the explosive return of Captain America as Sam Wilson uncovers a mysterious plot that threatens to destabilize the globe and confront an enemy that has the entire world seeing red.
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Welcome to South Beach Sessions, West Coast style. I'm very excited about this one. I'm gonna call this man my interview nemesis because he only wants to show you so much of himself. He likes this creative process a little bit. You tell me whether I've got anything wrong here. Baron Davis, two-time All-Star, but so much more than that.
Like, I don't know if two-time All-Star is the least interesting part of his story, but he's got more story to tell here. But I feel like what you have felt during the process of interviews over the course of your career A lot of gotcha, a lot of journalists trying to get you to say things and not totally understood.
So you play with the form and don't actually reveal anything intimate because you are careful that way. So I'm hoping that over the course of this, I can get to know you a little bit better.
And I don't know if you're going to allow it. I'm going to see it. I'm going to see if you deflect. No shark dogs this time.
No, I'm going to see. Yes, during the pandemic, he just made a total mockery of everything that we were doing at ESPN in a way I found delightful because at that point we were ready to leave ESPN and I felt like you were in on the joke. But I don't feel like I've gotten to know what your actual roots are, not just L.A., but like how you were raised by your grandparents.
How it is you got to where you are. And so these are meant to be intimate. They're meant to be biographical. And we will see how close you allow us to the truth here because you you're a very creative person. And I've loved to see what it is you've been trying to do in your city after from afar. Yeah. When I watch your career and I'm like. This guy loves LA, gets to UCLA, blows out his knees.
So that story doesn't go quite the way he wanted to. Gets to the league as a sophomore, way too early to get to the league. Then gets his dream with the Clippers and has a racist owner who makes everything awful. And you thought it was going to be something and it became something else. But I don't want to speak for you. I do want to get to the roots of how all of that was made.
So let's start with...
how it is that you grew up in los angeles and what los angeles means to you because it seems to have the same pull on you that miami has for me yeah man i think uh you know when you grow up uh in a city like miami or l.a especially growing up in l.a um as i was saying this last night as a kid by the time i hit 10 years old i had been to like 13 14 funerals
were kids, not adults, you know what I mean? These were kids, kids getting shot, kids dying, you know what I mean? And so I seen so much death, I seen so much drugs, I seen so much gang violence, I seen so much everything, everything you could imagine. You know what I mean? By 10 years old, right? Where I lived was like, it was,
If you paid attention, you're in the worst fucking place in the, can I cuss? You're in the worst, I was in the worst place that you can be. And there were epicenters in LA in the hood where it's like, hey, if you live in this hood or if you live in this, you know, on this street, like you're pretty much never, like you're never gonna make it.
let alone seeing down the block, seeing around the corner, like, you know, welfare, you know what I mean? In and out of crack houses, in and out of we don't know where the fuck we at. You hang out at the park, you know, at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. And then my grandparents just kind of like flipped the switch and gave me stability, gave me and my sister stability. So from that moment,
I could do nothing but as a eight, 10-year-old kid appreciate The fact that I can go to bed and wake up and I can do that every day, you know what I mean? And not have to worry about, is the house being raided? Like, where the fuck are we going tonight? You know what I mean? Like, damn, it's just me and my little sister here. What happened to the lights?
So, you know, the people who know me, they know, like, even my AAU, like, I was always the kid on the AAU team that everybody felt sorry for. You know what I mean? Because I didn't have parents. And like my grandparents, they was old and they went into sports. But I was like one of the only kids who like literally didn't have parents there. You know what I mean?
And if any of my teammates saw my parents, it would be probably the most embarrassing shit on the planet. You know what I mean? And so that's just kind of like. how I live, you know, I live with this creativity, you know, basketball and this mask and so it's like, I can flip this shit. I can take the crack head and put him on the court and now like, oh damn, he used to hoop.
oh you hooped in high school, you know what I mean? And so it was more so the negativity, the guns, the drugs. I used to dribble between my legs going into the school, and I had to dribble all the way to the court if I messed up, I had to go all the way back to my house, which was across the street. but also thinking about, all right, I better hurry up and get here before it's a drive-by.
I better hurry up and get here before somebody come, you know, gangs come or some problems. And so I grew up with this anxiety, with this PTSD, and church, my grandparents, basketball. Everything else, I had to turn things into comedy. I had to relate things to movies and TV.
I want to talk to you about creativity as an escape from all of that stuff and imagination.
to be able to dream for you what I've noticed in your post career in observing you is how much you gravitate toward possibilities and I was wondering sort of the source of the inspiration of that because I'm like hearing you with John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell over here just choosing the opportunities that Hollywood provides but let's go back just because I want to do this not necessarily chronologically but biographically so you're an adult by 10 years old right like you've
And somewhere along the lines, I don't know when this happened, you learned to love and appreciate LA, at least in part because of how tough it made you, I imagine.
I didn't know LA. I only knew... my neighborhood going to church it was only where we went my neighborhood on sundays we go to church it was there was no activities until basketball came and i like then i finally got a chance to play football in englewood so it was like okay my house englewood now i know people in englewood and so it was very um gated growing up la was gated like you i
And you're outside the gates. You're not allowed in the gates. We're in the epicenter of like, we're inside the gate. You know what I mean? It's like if there was a wall when I was growing up that could have been built so people wouldn't have to see a certain part of L.A. They would have built that shit in South Central. You know what I mean? And that's what it was.
I always say it's invisible walls because, you know, here I am on Manchester and San Pedro. You got Maine, you got Broadway, those two different gangs. San Pedro's different, Avalon, next street different. So you like, you know, city blocks, that's like those belong to someone else. So there's no walking to McDonald's even though it's four blocks away. There's no walking to the grocery store.
I mean, you can, but everything is like a chance. It's like you're literally taking a chance. It's not the way kids should be living. It's not the way kids should be thinking. No, not at all. I always say, can you imagine if I could walk From Manchester and San Pedro to the beach. It's not that far or ride a bike, it ain't happening. I can't even go to the bus stop.
And so that's how I got to Crossroads because my grandmother was just like, she needed me to go somewhere else. Well, Crossroads is a private school in Santa Monica, right? Crossroads is a private school in Santa Monica. My AAU basketball coach worked for K-Swiss. He was the marketing director at K-Swiss. They sponsored like four high school teams and Tony Smith.
Remember Tony Smith played for the Lakers. And Crossroads was one of the teams. There was a point guard at Crossroads named Trayvon Dugar. He was like 5'5", 5'6". And my AAU coach was like, damn, that could be Barron. He's not gonna grow past 5'5". He would be good around, he could actually assimilate to white people. You know what I mean?
Because you gotta think, only white people we know is the people we play against in AAU basketball. And so the high school coach was from my neighborhood. And my grandmother wanted me to go somewhere where I got out the neighborhood because one of my friends got killed on the bus stop. at like seven, eight o'clock in the morning going to school.
And so that was the bus, that's like the bus stop I have to take. You know what I mean? Like I can't walk to the next bus stop.
That was the last stop for grandma. She's like, we gotta.
That was it. She was like, man, if he can't walk around the corner, go sit on the bus stop, and that's the most dangerous part of the day. The bus stop is the most dangerous part of the day when you're going from elementary to middle school.
And if you're walking, you can't walk. And she can't take you either, right?
No, she don't drive. She don't drive. My grandfather drove. And so when I went to Crossroads, my grandfather would drive me from Manchester and San Pedro to Manchester and Crenshaw, which is like a bus ride, so I wouldn't have to be on the bus. My AAU coach would pick me up and take me to Crossroads, then drive all the way to Burbank. all the way back around the city.
And so I always say I was blessed. That's why I'm so positive. It's hard to believe how positive you are all the time. It's crazy. It's also like, I'm not sure I deserve all this shit. You know what I'm saying? Like, but I know like I know that there is a greater calling, a higher purpose.
And I understand like a lot of things because I've I've had to understand me through other people, understand me through other situations, you know, and more so like. take my agendas, take my selfishness, and put that shit to the side because I've always tried to save somebody or bring somebody along, you know what I mean?
And whether that is to my detriment, why I kept getting hurt in the league or whatnot, I just kind of wouldn't trade how I did this for anything because I learned so much about myself. I learned so much about the person that I was as a kid. I can relate to that kid now. I can communicate to that kid now. But also, I want to help solve problems. You know what I mean?
Because a lot of it is creativity. I keep going back to that, is you escape. If it wasn't for basketball, basketball is art. That was my art. I could escape. I was all imagination. I was all dreams. You know what I mean? It didn't matter who it was. If you want to hoop, cool. You know what I mean? If we watching basketball, cool. So that was like every day.
you start living in this tunnel, you know what I mean?
A safer tunnel than everything else you were dealing with. I want to talk to you, and we will get to all of this, about how it is that you walk with gratitude now and may feel like you don't deserve all of the opportunities that have come your way because the odds, I don't know that people understand what the odds are against you arriving in the places that you arrived when you talk about
the anxiety and the PTSD. But I don't know the story and forgive my ignorance here as to how it is that you came to not have parents when the other kids are seeing that you don't have parents and are being raised by your grandparents.
Yeah. You know, LA, LA drugs, gangs. It was at the height crack at a crack epidemic. And, you know, my parents fell victim to that. It wasn't,
you know it started like oh this was great like i'm just a normal kid get a lot of toys hella spoiled you know what i mean and then it was like nothing eating you know eating out we only had a fry and skillet we only had like uh one blanket and a heater we had you know all our got pushed out and you at the park it was like you went from like
banging on drums and having all these toys to literally nothing. And you blame it on the system or you blame your parents for their lifestyle and the partying. It's like I never had a relationship with my dad. I never understood him, you know what I mean? I felt like he had good energy, you know what I mean? He was always smiling and shit, but I knew nothing about him. Outside of like, who knows?
This is what he do. He'd come around every blue moon, you know what I mean? Once or twice every two or three months. But because he wasn't there, it wasn't like I needed him. You know what I mean? And so like, it was normal for me. It was normal for me to be the kid. To be on your own, to be self-sufficient.
Yeah, yeah. So but how do you go from having, so you see the crack epidemic sort of just sweep through your living room? Like you see the deterioration of your parents?
Oh, it was crazy. It's like the whole neighborhood.
You know, I remember I learned, my mom taught me how to catch the bus at like four years old, and she was a beautician, she worked in the salon, and I would catch the bus at four down, you know, like she, I learned a lot, everything was good, I was a mature kid, I had a lot of love, and I like, I had, I did not want for anything, and then it went from that to like nothing.
and you have the childhood snapshots i remember so little of my life at that age i don't have but i grew up exile sheltered like my parents were just afraid and that was not coming through my neighborhood it was just small keep it small and and and your grandmother your grandparents were trying to keep it small but i'm talking about before then You are, it sounds like you're becoming an adult.
Fast. As like, you know, you five, you know, you six, seven. I'm getting kicked out of school in third grade, you know, for cussing out teachers and shit like that. And it, you know, it's just, you're just forced to, you're only around adults. You know what I mean? And like, the adults are dominating everything. all of the time in the day and the lifestyle. And the kids, we go outside and play.
That was our disconnect from the world. So you're out at two and three in the morning because you're not supervised?
Sometimes they would go out, they got kids, they wanna do they thing. Where the fuck do you drop some kids off? At the park. And so that's how I got good at basketball too. I would be at the park, you playing at the park at like 11, 12 o'clock at night. And so that's kind of like, I got used to that.
But I knew like, all right, the car over there, you know, outside, you know, pull in, drop us off in the park, then pull outside the park, park across the street from the park next to the industrial spot where cops can't really jam you up, you know what I mean? So that was that. That was like a lot of, it was just a lot of like,
being in weird ass situations and figuring out how to make the most of it. But you don't know, as a kid you don't know. It's like shit man, I think it's cool. I'm at the park, it's 11 o'clock, it's dark, it's just me and my sister and maybe two other kids.
We know what's going on, but we don't really, you know what I mean, we don't really know what's going on. Because I was just gonna ask you, it sounds like you had your childhood stolen, but you're saying children don't know that they're having their childhood stolen necessarily.
Yeah, you, and I had a great childhood, because I still got to be a kid, like the opposite side of that was my grandparents, a lot of love, my sisters, my friends, like we played a lot, but like you, like you were covered. Your parents said, whatever's going on in the world, we're gonna make sure Dan can just see what he needs to see until the world opens up. My shit was like, boom.
All right, what's all this? And so now you gotta figure out, who do you trust?
That's a big one.
Man, one wrong turn, I'm a kid, right? One wrong turn, I'm kidnapped. One wrong turn, you know, I'm somewhere else. You know what I mean? Like, anything can happen. One wrong turn, I could have been in a gang. Wrong wrong turn, I could have drank or smoked something that I shouldn't have. And so it's just... It was just tough because this world has opened up.
Now you gotta figure out, okay, who do I trust? Who gives me a feeling of being safe? Why is this person trying to help me? So then you playing Russian roulette with all these different situations at eight years old.
And I don't know how you are taught or learned what love is. Never mind trust. You've got trust is one thing. I don't even know how all of this would impact future relationships for you or just general distrust on what your relationship is with women, with men, with authority figures, with any of it.
It has a huge impact, I think, because you don't feel... Like my grandmother's love, the most incredible love in the world. My grandfather's love before he passed away, the most incredible love in the world. But when I start thinking about it as an adult, it's like those are your grandparents. They never told you about their life. They never told you about their past.
They just made it safe for you to wake up, go to sleep. get mad at you for not cleaning, you know, just the little things. But, like, they didn't, they weren't connected to a little kid growing up, listen, now hip-hop and all, like, you know.
And what does their relationship look like? Like, what are you learning in the generational gap there about how a man and a woman get along to provide safety for a child?
Yeah, it's, yeah, it's like my, I would say my grandparents, I watched them be, taken advantage of by their kids. They opened their house. My grandfather, if you were walking in off the street and needed food, they would feed you. You know what I mean? My grandmother's like, go get them something to eat. This dude over here, he look like go get him something to eat. That's where that love was.
People stopped by our house all the time whether you were up, you were down, you were good, you were bad. It was just almost like this big therapy place and it was home for a lot of people and it was safe. Even when you was out in the street doing all the bullshit, you run back to the house because you know anybody come around this little gate and border, oh, it's action.
So that brought so many different people into my world, like random shit every day. You know what I mean? Credit card scam. Right there on the table. Hey, let me get one of them credit cards. Get your ass out of here. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like damn, I can't get a credit card, go shopping, I get in trouble, I get a whooping. You know, drugs, violence, gang violence, all kind of violence.
Like, you know, like watching my dad and my mom fight and like my mom, and then now I'm sitting in the backseat with my mom going to the hospital. You know what I mean? I could kill somebody. I could kill him. I could kill my mama's boyfriend. I'm eight years old. This is what I'm thinking. Outside of basketball and everything, the dark side is I should kill him if he goes to school.
because you're seeing your mother beaten or you're seeing?
Yeah, just saying like you mistreated my mom. I don't like my mom because she being mistreated. It's not, you know what I mean? And then like, man, I should, when this dude goes to sleep, I'm going in the kitchen, getting the biggest knife I can and I'm going, it's over. You know what I mean? What kid needs to be thinking about that? You know what I mean?
And you thinking about like, if I decide to do this, I better do it and be successful or he's gonna kill me. You know what I mean? And I think my grandparents just was like, once I got with them, it was just like, I was protected. My grandfather, My grandmother, like me and my little sister, we start becoming protected. We start feeling safe, you know what I mean?
We start to like be more of a kid now all the vices and the shit that was coming, we got to now a chance to sit back and watch people like TV instead of being in it, you know what I mean?
Right, of course. I mean, yes, a saving grace even more than basketball. Before we get to, though, how it is or what it is that you remember about coming into their care... Beyond being in the backseat, think as an eight year old thinking about how do I rescue my mother here? What do you regard as the most turbulent or scary or trauma inducing event?
landmark before 10 years old that others would say, okay, there are the roots of where it is that Baron Davis started to be stronger earlier than he ever should have had to get strong because he overcame X, Y, and Z.
I mean, I would say even before that, you know, you're four or five, six years old, you're living on the streets. You're walking in standing motels, right? So it wasn't, it was survival, right? And as a kid, you just, you kind of like, you got to trust the person you with because like where else the fuck are you going to go? You know what I mean? Like who else do you trust?
And so I think all of that happened Kind of like when my grandfather built my basketball court for Christmas and like basketball kind of came into my life, it kind of numb me from people because I had I had an instrument that didn't require anybody's help. I didn't have to tell anybody what I was doing. And like this, this was kind of like my therapy, but like.
Being in this survival mode, right, where it's like you don't know what's going to happen the next day. Like, you don't know what's going to happen. You know what I mean? It's like you wake up and you're like, okay.
Okay, cool, the day was cool, we got through the day. You know what I mean? So you're waking up with anxiety every morning.
You're waking up not knowing what the hell you're gonna do. You go to school, if it wasn't for school, that was, but kids in third, fourth grade, they ditching, cutting class, getting suspended. So that shit was normal. That was normal.
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have you as an adult forgiven your parents? What is your relationship?
So my dad passed away. He actually passed away the night before a Laker game. And that was the first game that I had invited him to.
Oh, no.
Yeah, I got to a point where, you know, I hated my dad a lot. I hated him a lot, and I didn't want nothing to do with him, I was embarrassed, and like, you know, it's one of those things, it's like, damn, like, oh, now you wanna show up, because I'm balling in high school, I'm about to go pro, you know, and,
for him, I just think he was really just like always happy for me and was like, oh shit, this is my son, you know what I mean? And it was like three or four years I was in the league and then something hit me and I was at a game and I was like, yo, everybody here got dads. All my teammates had dads. Like fathers, like real, I was like, damn. You know, Paul Silas, you got Steve Silas, it was like,
They going to dinner with their dad. Their dad come in. I was like, shit, man. I ain't got no goddamn daddy. I do have a daddy. Maybe I can help him. And so I went. I called my dad. I was like, bro, don't even trip. I forgive you. It could be because if you chose a different path and you chose to be active in my life or try or even give an inkling of trying, I probably wouldn't have made it.
So I gotta thank you, bro, for showing me all this shit, putting me through all that shit, because it made me who I am. And I don't hold any more animosity to you because I made it. So it wasn't like a despite. It was just like you helped me get to where I needed to go because of how you were.
That must be freeing to forgive, to have gratitude. It was incredible.
And on top of that, I'm about to do you one better, homie. I'm about to come back. Now, you about to get your shit together. And I want you at these games because I want people to say, oh, this is my daddy. You know what I mean? And I got questions. You know what I mean? I got questions. do you got a lump right here on the back of your neck? I got questions, like who am I in relationship to you?
And so when I made amends, and we were talking, you know what I mean? It was awkward, but it was also like, damn, I know that was him, I didn't pick up the phone on the first one, but I'll call him back, you know what I mean?
Well, and you have to crave it somewhere. Like if you're always the kid who never has his parents at the games, there has to be a craving somewhere in there for like even no matter how tough, how many scars you've got, something that feels like love or, hey, be proud of me. Yeah, like that would feel good. That would feel good to have someone be proud of sharing that with someone.
It was almost like if they were proud of me, I would have been more upset. Why is that? Because that's where my angst, like that's where my interpretation, you got to think, I'm trying to interpret this shit myself. So if they would have been proud, like my dad showed up to the game, I remember in high school, and he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was like rooting for me and shit, cheering for me, telling people he was my dad. And I kicked his ass. I told him, man, you got to go, bro. Like you tripping. You know what I mean? Like, you ain't been around. Oh, I see. And you gonna pop up and you cheering for me like, get your ass out. You haven't earned this. You've been embarrassing me. I was just mad. You know what I mean?
I was just always mad. And until I made amends... Then when we were talking, I was like, man, you know what? I wanna invite you to a game. He was happy as shit. But at the time, he had emphysema, so he was kinda like fading.
And we played the Utah Jazz, and then we had the Lakers on the back-to-back, but I talked to him during my nap, like, yo, bro, you gotta come to the game, got your tickets, we come in tomorrow, I want you to come to the game, meet my teammates, yada, yada, yada. I'll never forget, the plane landed from Utah, Soon as the plane land, I couldn't even turn my phone on and it was ringing.
But my sister called and said, Daddy in the hospital. He may not be able to make it to the game before we left. When the phone rang, she was like, he dead. And then I was like, damn. And I remember sitting on the bus, Eldon Campbell, Derek Coleman, a couple of my teammates just put their arm around me. I was like, man, everything going to be all right. I was like...
Of course it is, you know what I mean? I didn't even know how to, I didn't know what to feel. It wasn't no feeling, it was just like damn, dude, this is, It's hella fucked up, I played in the game. But it was like, why am I thinking about this man like this? So that's like, you're wrestling with, do you love him, do you care, I don't care, I'm tough, I'm strong, like fuck all this shit.
You know what I mean? It's like you're building this persona and it's like, I don't know if I'm sad, mad, you know what I mean? Confused. Confused. But I remember getting on that court, Shaq came up to me, D-Fish, Kobe, everybody. By the time the game started. But they don't know any of this, right? They don't know what your relationship is with your dad. No, it's just now I lost my dad.
So everybody is like, damn, dude. Like you think about it, it's like, oh, I lost my dad. Damn, if I lost my dad, I got to reach out to BD. And they was like, man, you all right? I'm like, yeah. I'm like, you shouldn't be playing. I'm like, hell if I ain't. This has always been the place I escaped to. This is the only thing I got, dude.
This is like the only thing I know I have that I can do that I don't need anybody else to do.
In retrospect, I don't know how you feel about it now, but God Almighty, what a blessing to forgive him and make amends before losing him.
Oh, man, it's crazy. It's crazy.
Whether he gets to see the game or not, you gave him something that felt like happy. It might have been the last happy thing he felt.
Totally. And he gave me something, too. You know what I mean? He gave me the opportunity to walk in or try to learn who he was. So, like, as I get older, as I get kids, you know what I mean? Like, now I got two kids, and all I think about is, like, damn, if I don't take my kids to school today, like... they're gonna look at me like how am I, you know what I mean?
Like if I travel and I'm gone for like three or four days at a conference on business, I gotta get my ass back. And so it kinda helped me like, understand him more, understand his life. I know nothing about his life. You know what I mean? Still. A little bit.
Bits and pieces. You were eager to ask those questions.
I needed to, but I never got a chance. And so it's like everything has been through, you know, discovery. Like I learned a lot about my dad at his funeral. At his funeral, everything I needed to know about him was three people got up and spoke. The three people that got up and spoke, I learned everything about this dude.
He had a drug dealer he owed a lot of money to, and the drug dealer was like, man, you know what, he's the only dude that, and he was a tough dude, he was like, yo, he's the only dude that got a fucking IOU credit with me, and every time I see him, he just smile and be like, hey man, I'll get you tomorrow. You know what I mean?
And so he was like, man, that dude was so goddamn charming and helpful.
So his dealer is one of the people giving the eulogy?
Yeah, people give up and give a speech. So the guy who was his dealer and then his best friend.
friend who we roll with was like yo man like whatever we was doing and like every you know like we do it we party da da da but he would always get up in the morning and we read the Wall Street Journal the New York Times have a coffee and sit up and we were like yo what are you doing he's like man you gotta fit you know he was he was an intellect he was an intellect too and so he was like highly intellectual people say he was super smart and then people say he was super crazy like creative crazy
And my mama said he used to see things, you know what I mean?
So you got some of that, though. You got some of that.
Yeah, I got some of that. I would say creative. Creatively curious. I learned how to really just use curiosity as a learning tool. to understand people, to be able to forgive people, to be able to forgive myself, too, when I do wrong by people, you know what I mean? I would say that's how I kind of unlock my freedom, right, is understanding that there's a...
there's always two ways to look at the scene. There's a dark version and there's a Disney version.
I wish I were better at forgiving myself on some of that stuff. I haven't gotten to the freedom on the other side of if you get good at being gentle with yourself, you can make some of the mistakes without ravaging yourself and look at the light instead of the dark.
Why is that though? Is it based on the pressures of success?
I would say that if you make me get to the roots of that, wherever it is that I was smothered by exile parents in a small world and because work was the thing that would get you to freedom and they were scared – that whatever it is I was doing was not quite enough because I had to be a little bit better because the only way to freedom. I don't have any of these traumas.
I got into my 50s without realizing how strong I was. But that hardened me, like trying to always be better made for a striving because it was like the one thing that I was taught. But it's unforgiving.
Yeah, for sure. Because you're not... you're determined to get there and so you don't really know. It's like basketball, it's like you may, you know how like the old coach comes like, oh man, you know, like the old coach is like mad because you haven't reached back to them or brought them along with you and it's just like when you're working, you're just .
And when you're obsessed with work and you're like, you know, like when work is your lifestyle and your destination is to get there, like it's not that you're not appreciative.
As it must be to get to where you got, right? Like you got, people do not realize how obsessive compulsive you have to be about the sculpting and all the lopsided shit you have to be that like falls. I still don't understand how you were able to get to the league as a sophomore, even with, you know- Everything it is that you're talking about.
But in talking about your parents real quick and your father and how it is that you arrive in a place of forgiveness. A child, I have a lot of friends who lost parents to addiction or alcohol, and because it happened as kids, the feeling that they had is, why did you choose that over me?
Man, you can't do that.
You didn't do any of that.
Yeah, hell yeah, you do that as a kid, but as an adult, I'm looking at it and like, man, you know, it's like, that's what you're going to automatically think as a kid, but as an adult, you're like, maybe he was embarrassed. You know what I mean, that's why he didn't come see me. Maybe he was hungover and had plans and intentions to come see me and it was just too late, I was already in school.
I started making excuses for them. You know what I mean, as adults because shit, you're an adult, you got these kids, do you want them or not? It don't matter. If you don't have no real responsibility, then you don't have a real responsibility. And so you gotta kind of live your life like they wanted to live their life and party and hang out. I'm sure that shit made them feel good.
You know what I mean?
So you never did any of that because you're talking to me about it as an adult. And so you didn't even do that as a kid.
Well, as a kid, I hated them. Like, as a kid, I hated them because it wasn't so much... Yeah, I would say, like, you're choosing to live this lifestyle.
Or a disease has a grip on you and you're not choosing much of anything. You can't.
There's nothing... There's nothing you can do. There's nothing... It's so sad. Like, it's so sad because... It ain't nothing you can do, you wake up, you wake up, and you like, I wake up and go to school, they wake up, and they on a whole nother mission. It's a whole different lane, you know what I mean? It's like, here's the Disney movie, here's the damn gangster movie, and all of these movies,
are happening in my world and you as a child are viewing like physical things disappearing from your home that are being sold or like to to keep the habits going right like you're just no we just went from like no it was they weren't even selling shit out the house it went from like uh because i mean we're on welfare so we get welfare checks too um it went from like
everything we got kicked out all our was on on the sidewalk and then once it's on the sidewalk it's trash so now you just wait they didn't have it they ain't had nothing to sell now you just don't have now you're just a child that doesn't have anything right no ebay back then to try and slow it down maybe that's what happened to my toys and I was like, what happened to my toys, man?
I'm losing toys. I don't know if they saw. I wouldn't say.
Tell me more positively, is Leela your grandmother's name?
Yeah, my grandmother, Leela, we call her Medea. She was like, I would say for me, the epitome of love. Just like the backstop of care and wanting to see. All she wanted to see was, she wanted you to be clean cut, honorable, respectful, humble, and treat people kindly. She was funny. I think that's where I get my sense of humor from and my wittiness. She was all about the church.
We had to stay in church. We had to go to church. Funny enough, she was never into sports. Never. When I in the basketball, she used to be like, boy, you in that damn ball. You play that ball too much. You know what I mean? Like, you better get your education. You better have something to fall back on. So that was her thing with basketball.
Like, yeah, whatever it is you think you want to play that, you better get an education. You know what I mean? You don't want to be no dummy. That's what she used to call me. You don't want to be no dummy. But she was like the perfect person, man. I think when you think about like unconditional love. Like that's a grandmother's love. It's just so unconditional, right?
And, you know, she passed away, I would say, all the way to my last year in the league when I, Cleveland, my transition from Cleveland to New York. And the sad thing about that is she had dementia. And I didn't know what dementia was when she had it.
Oh, so at the end you're not recognizing, you don't have a diagnosis.
Yeah, you know, like in the hood, you know what I mean, or on this part of the movie, they may say dementia, but you're like, you don't know what the fuck that means. We're like, oh, she going crazy. Oh, you know, she just repeat herself. Like in our community, we kind of like, it's kind of like a nonchalant approach of, Oh, you know, granny gone crazy. She just be talking shit.
Don't pay attention to her. Or, you know, she's tired or she'll just repeat herself. But like the dementia, I didn't know what it was. And so I started getting frustrated with my grandmother. And getting frustrated going to see my grandmother. That was like my only place of peace and refuge. And I always say I like never had a chance to have the last conversation with her.
And so that's when I learned what the word dementia was. Then I was able to forgive myself again for my ignorance, right? And then also, like, you're sitting in this weird space where it's like, damn, like, I could have... maybe done something to help, you know what I mean? But there was nothing I can do to help. So like I have to be at peace now that I understand. You know what I mean?
Now that I understand it.
Well, it's nice that, so what you're saying is in the stages of grief, you have gone through the guilt and forgiven yourself so that that's, the guilt is no longer there for you because I was ignorant. I just didn't know. How could I know? But in remembering her in the most positive ways that you remember her, her with what you're saying is an unconditional love. She was giving you discipline.
There was discipline there. There was safety there. How about belief?
Yeah. You can do and be whoever you wanted to be as long as you clean up, clean cut, make good grades, don't get in no trouble. That was it. That's all she cared about. Do not get, be a good human being. Be God fearing, right? Treat people right. Treat people with respect. You can be whatever you like.
You can do whatever you want for a job. And then a friend dies at the bus stop and she sends you to a private school. How was that possible? It's your basketball skill that's making that possible in Santa Monica, right?
No, it was my AAU coach. My AAU coach literally was like, hey man, this dude live in South Central. He's probably the only kid on the team that is in this situation. He would be cool to be a proof of concept at a school like a Crossroads.
And you fit in, or was there culture shock? Yeah, it was culture shock. I mean, there must be, right? On both sides. Yeah, I'm sure. But also, okay, this is a totally different world, and there are opportunities here that weren't available to me before.
Man, it was white people. That's all I saw. When I first got there, you gotta think, I only know white people from police, maybe the grocery store, on TV, like I, you know, or we play basketball and we had like, one year we had a white person on our team, you know what I mean? But it was like, white people were rivals. And then I get to Crossroads and I realize like,
Oh, not everybody here is white. What do you mean? You know, white? What are you? Oh, I'm Jewish. What the fuck do that mean? Yeah, you're just learning a whole new... You know what I mean? Like, I'm Korean. What do you mean? Like, I thought everybody was Chinese. Yeah, you're just learning. You don't realize how small your world was. Oh, my God. I knew nothing. You know what I mean?
I knew nothing about people. I knew nothing about... Like, at Crossroads, it was almost like my first year. I could have got kicked out once a week for either saying some shit I wasn't supposed to do, drawing some shit I had no idea what I was drawing. You know what I mean? You're just ignorant. Yeah, I was completely ignorant to, like,
everybody else right but why if you're living in a gated it's not a gated I wouldn't call it a gated community but you're saying it's a gated that you don't there's nothing outside those walls for you and furthermore if not for I mean many people never get outside those gates if not for grandma and basketball and AAU coach and everything else the odds are you never get beyond those gates totally dude
And your ignorance is just like, they looking at you like, they struggle with me. I would say like the first year because they never had someone like me. But it was a great experience because every moment was like, Oh, you meant this? You mean here? Oh, it's all learning. I was getting fixed.
You know what I mean?
I was getting learned, right? And at the same time, they had to learn me because I was not like any kid at that school. I was the one kid that didn't have anything. So even if you suspended me for the day and sent me home, I live in South Central. Ain't nobody coming to pick me up. So you know when I get suspended at school, guess where I be at? I don't care.
You're still in school, like you're just wandering.
I get suspended. I'm like, all right, cool. And then the principal got to walk around the campus. I slide out of his office. I'd be sitting on a little stool.
I got nowhere to go.
And people were like, we thought you were suspended. I was like, I am. Like, I'm just waiting for my ride. and my ride didn't come to 5 o'clock every day. It was frustrating, dude. Shout out to Tom Nolan, Morgan Swartz. They used to suspend me, and I'd be sitting in their office like this. I'm going to call your grandmother. I'm going to call her.
But suspended, I mean, I don't want to say you're feral, but suspended because you're arriving. You haven't had very much. There's some church, there's some grandma, but you haven't, like, social norms?
Nah, I don't know, I was just an aggressive kid, you know what I mean? I was aggressive and I loved to play, I loved football, I would love to fight. I remember I was trying to fight somebody and the dude was like, man, I'm not trying to fight you, we need to talk about this. I'm like, talk? Like talk, are you crazy? Can you believe this dude wanted to talk to me?
And everybody around the circle was like, yeah, you should talk. I'm like, what? So the problem solving is we fight. We fight. If we disagree, we fight. Yeah, we don't even, we ain't no negotiating. It's like, you know, it's like somebody going to get socked. It's like you got to get the first sock in. And then at Crossroads, they're like, hold on, dude. You upset? Let's talk about it.
What the fuck you mean let's talk about it, dude? It was like, dude, what did I do wrong that's bothering you? And you get to a point where you're like, I don't fucking know, dude. I just want to beat your ass. And everybody around is like, well, why do you want to do that? That makes no sense. He didn't really do it. And then you walk away like, damn, dude.
All right, well, ain't nobody at this school fighting. I guess I got to start talking about my problems. It was like... I'll give you a funny one. I'll give you a good one. So we had a, like peer counseling, it was called Life Skills. I was in seventh grade. I feel like Kate Hudson was in my class too. So we would pass around and everybody go, you know, talk about, oh, you know, my mom.
And like these kids were deep. Like my mom going through this, my parents going through a divorce. talking piece get to me, I'm like, what the fuck am I gonna say? I say, you know what? I'm gonna open up to you guys. You know, I used to have a twin. and we were playing basketball at the park, and it was a drive-by shooting, and they shot my twin, killed him, so I'm playing for two people.
And after the class, dude, it got out on school. They was like, oh, Barron could've had a twin, we could've had two people. Kate Hudson walks up like, you don't have no fucking twins, stop telling people you got a twin. I'm like,
and then I told people I had a kid when I was 13 and here she comes again yeah I know kids stop telling people stop lying like tell them the truth but people thought I had a kid at 13 at Crossroads they thought I had a twin I was just making shit up well you do that with the media sometimes I think you get bored in these because they're asking you the same question and next thing you're doing is talking about yeah I was abducted by aliens oh my god the alien thing that was crazy I just made the story up
I made the story up, and the dude clipped it, and that's the only thing he put out on the pod. It was a good podcast. And he was just like, what happened? I was like, man, I don't know. I was driving from Vegas. You know what I mean? It's just your imagination. I was just like, yeah. You're just bored. I was super bored.
And then next thing you know, I'm on the fucking New York Post, and everybody's like, oh. And then I'm seeing people like, yo, you're so alien today.
You didn't think of the consequences of what you were luring into your life with that story.
I had people from high school, I had a buddy from high school call me, and he was like, man, I wanna catch up with you. I'm like, man, let's catch up. We go to lunch, and we catching up, and he talking about his business, what I'm doing, and I'm thinking like, damn, dude, this dude gonna invest with me, invest in a company, invest in my movie. And he goes, all right, last thing.
You know that thing? I said, man, I ain't seen no fucking aliens, yo. I was not abducted by an alien, yo. I was not abducted by an alien. He was like.
denying it now he's like ah yeah i was like um if there are like yeah understood yeah yeah i mean i if it was true i'd i'd give you the real right but you were just bored look i've got experience with you being bored during the interviews like i know what you do when you're bored during interviews uh but your high school team is great because of you correct
Yeah, we were good. My senior year we were really good. Our junior year we were good. My senior year we were really good. Just because we were underdogs. We had a really good underdog mentality. We were well coached. You underestimated all of my teammates. and they were really good.
And so we're defensively, we're scrappy, you know, and then we had guys, Felipe Williams, Chad Gordon, Laquan Tolbert, all these dudes could play and make plays, you know, and score. EJ Harris, Cash Warren was on that team. Jake Hoffman was on that team, Dustin Hoffman's son. So Dustin Hoffman, Denzel, imagine our games.
Bro, it's crazy, Dustin Hoffman, Denzel, UCLA basketball team, all these directors, producers, that shit was like rockstar my senior year, it was crazy. People always, Kate Hudson and I are same class. We graduated the same class, so that's my home girl. One of my besties.
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Did you have other options that you were seriously considering out of high school other than UCLA?
Yeah, I was going to go to Duke. I was gonna go to Duke. I was all set on Duke, I was big on Duke. I liked the way they played, I thought if I go to ACC, you know what I mean, like ooh, just like the way they flow, how they play defense. And then I got started getting recruited by Duke, and then Coach K's mom, his mom started getting sick, and then this the first time I gotta leave home.
So I'm thinking like, All right, if I go to Duke, I'm out of LA. I'm out of all the like, melee and, but I gotta leave my grandma. I don't know. You know what I mean? I don't know if that is the right thing. Now, if I go to Duke, I'm going to wind up being one of the best players ever at Duke. You know what I mean?
Just because of my talent, the way they play, the kind of talent that they had around. That would have taken me into strictly basketball, all basketball, be the greatest player you can ever be, and everybody else was here to help. You know what I mean? Or stay home, take care of granny.
There's a whole new generation of LA basketball players that have been coming to your games in high school, that's playing in middle school and elementary. I was like, man, I'm staying home with my homeboys. I wanna raise my young wolves up. I want them to see, I want them to still be able to go.
If I fuck around and go to Duke, they gonna stop giving tickets to all these kids that I was giving tickets to, their parents. You know, when I'm a prime time recruit. So I just thought about all that. And then when Coach K's mom got sick, I think he missed a visit. And it just like really sat with me. I was like, damn, dude, I felt for him. And I was so, like Coach K and I were connected too.
I started to feel the same thing about my grandma. And I think Coach K held that against me. He wrote about it in the book. I was like the hardest recruit. But I don't think that he understood that we were more connected than we weren't. You know what I mean? And so I always felt for him in that situation. But I did want to go to Duke. I ain't going to even lie.
But I decided to go to UCLA based on... All right, I'm here in LA. All right, here's what I have to do. Take over my grandmother, raise the next generation, be here. Like, you know, you have to make these little, you got to sign a contract either way.
Not so little though. Those things aren't little. Like the idea of staying home and all of those things you just mentioned and the connection to love that you didn't want to be on the other side of the country away from.
Like Duke would have been the selfish move.
But you don't regret it, right?
I mean, you think about it, it's like, damn dude, if I would've wound up at Duke, I would've got all the pub, all the hype, you know, national stage, right? At the time, nah, I don't regret it. Got Earl Watson, dog, that's my dog like shit. You never find an Earl Watson in your life, you know what I mean? Rico Hines, that's my dog, you know what I mean?
Yeah, Matt Barnes, you got Ty Ramazar, he an agent in the space now, but you ain't gonna never find no Earl Watson, so shit. Earl Watson, Trump, all of Duke, you know what I mean? Just my experience with him. and L.A. and the next Kizzy now you see Pharma and Drew Holiday and Russ and all these dudes starting to come to UCLA. It's like oh we back baby. You know what I mean? Lonzo Ball.
We built something.
We built something in my city. Yeah we stay. We held it down and like These dudes just keep upping the levels. And so I get to be a fan of them, I get to say I went to the same college and played point guard, same as Drew Holiday, same as Russell Westbrook, same as Lonzo Ball, Darren Collison, Jordan Farmer, you know what I mean? Aaron Holiday, right?
And you started it, and you were at the forefront. Yeah, I was the transitional dude, right? Because nobody was, we had come off a national championship, and UCLA was still trying to recruit on a national level, and I was local, so it all worked out.
Your freshman year, you dunk, you blow out your knee, and I don't know if that is the first time, but you then, over the course of your career, have an assortment of injuries that is your body betraying you. You want to go through them? Because it's a lot of them.
Yeah, I would say once I hurt my knee, it was kind of like, Damn, like I never had basketball. I never was like, the one thing I had every day was I can go play basketball. Once I got hurt like that, the only other time I got hurt before I was in high school, I broke my ankle and I told the homies I wanna start gang banging. You know what I mean? Because I was bored. Couldn't go play ball.
I was like, yeah, put me on. I want to be on the hood. So at UCLA, when I got hurt, it was just like, damn, I'm in college. I just became a total fuck-up. I would say that's the first time I gave up. I gained like 40 pounds. I was like 253. And I'll never forget my college coach, Steve Spencer, he came to my apartment. He was like, man, you over here. Like, you know, because in college I was cool.
You know, I had some bread. I had nice cars. More than one. But it was all, you know, all my own hustle. No illegal shit. Just, you know, no NCAA illegal shit. Just all my hustle. Yeah. And he came to me, he was like, bro, you fucking lazy, you privileged, you entitled, you was just hitting me up with all this shit.
I was like, wait, hold on, I am kinda like, at school, living like a D-boy, you know what I mean? And I'm not, you know what I'm saying? And so at that moment, it was like 5 o'clock in the morning, I couldn't swim, right? And so he would make me go to the pool. And because I couldn't swim, I couldn't tread water, and I couldn't swim laps, so the workouts were like impossibly hard.
Because it was just... like falling down, getting up, and so I had to learn how to swim.
Right, because you can't have tension on the ligaments and stuff.
Yeah, and that was the only way I could get in shape. So because I was like a bad swimmer, I got in shape faster because I was like doing all the shit I wasn't supposed to, getting like super tired. And, you know, I started working my way back, and then I came back my sophomore year.
And you go to college, so you go in your sophomore year, after your sophomore year, you declare. Are you in any way ready for everything that comes with that? You are now a professional at, are you even 20 yet? No, I'm 19 still. So you're an adult in some ways, but not an adult in the ways that... No, not in the world.
No, not at all. Shout out to Arn Tellem, Bob Myers. They were my agents. I think I had good agents, you know what I mean? And Arn built a good family environment. And so when I turned pro, I would hang out at Arn's office every day. Or go to my workouts, go to office. Go to my workouts, go to apartment. But I would spend my day just hanging out in the office because I had nothing to do.
And so they would let me listen in on phone conversations. Arm would be negotiating.
Oh, so this is where your business interests started.
Because now you are super interested.
Yeah, I'm into it. You are somebody who cares about financial acumen, and this is where it started. Yeah.
Yeah, and I wanted to know, I was just curious, what's so-and-so making? What's so-and-so making? What my contract look like versus Tracy McGrady versus Kobe? What's in his contract that's not in my contract? And so Bob Myers would let me read contracts or they would ask me for like...
you know different stuff like what did you learn from that you know our arm would let me sit in on baseball negotiations sometimes uh the uh he let me sit in on my nike negotiation for my shoe deal um oh and there's like so now there's just light spilling into the room on you on possibility like wait a minute i gotta do that yeah you know what i mean like this looks cool i want to be i want to be an agent you know what i mean like agents are cool you know what i mean they're having the right conversations
They know all this stuff. This is some shit that I can get down. Outside of like, I want to make movies, and they keep telling me, no, you can't make movies. No, you can't be an actor. No, you can't. I'm like, why can't I? I want to make movies. They're like, no, you can't do that. You're going to go broke. It's like, well, I want to be an actor. No, you can't do that. No athletes are...
It's like cameo roles. So that was like the other alternative was looking at Arn and just really studying from him, Bob. So I would say my first three years of the league was like one of the best internships because Like I had another safe space and work environment like school. And then on hoop, all I had to do was hoop at that point.
You know what I mean? See, that's not even what I was asking you because I'm assuming you're not ready for the social parts of it. You're not ready for all of a sudden so many people who want to be in your life. You haven't learned the skills of who you should trust, who shouldn't you trust. All manner of temptation is coming your way on people who don't actually know you but feel like they do.
So that's what I was talking about. about you not being ready for it.
I went to Charlotte, so Charlotte was the Bible Belt, so I met great people. I met great people, met people who are family, but to your point, on the other side, it's like,
I spent all my time here in the gym and I tried to spend very little time being social or letting people have access to me in the first, I would say the first two or three years because anytime some shit happened, it was still the same drama. My mama and daddy still on drugs, you know what I mean? My family and my granny is still getting older, right? There's still like violence in the hood.
There's still like all of, like my world, is not like left behind. This whole shit comes with me, you know what I mean? And it just, because of who I am, everything else grows around it.
So basketball is still the escape everywhere. All of the shit, all of the shit is always around you since childhood and you don't escape it by going to Charlotte. And you wouldn't have escaped it going to Duke.
Going to Duke, yeah. And that's what I started learning in Charlotte was like, yo, like, These problems are worse now, you know what I mean? And I can't get away from them, so. Well, now everybody needs money, right? Now you're the one, you're the economy. I am everybody's lot. Look, let me tell you something, Dan. You know, I wouldn't even come at you like this, but you are my last resort.
That is the conversation. Yeah. Your best friend can call you, oh, what's up, Dan? What's happening, man? Man, you have an hour conversation. Call back the next day, like, man, you know, I really called you yesterday to, you my last resort, bro. I need like $1,500. I need like $700. I need like $3,500 to, can you bail someone out at $3,500? I need a lawyer. I need this, da-da-da-da, like,
Nobody's asking for $100,000. But a hundred or a thousand people are asking for $510, $12. You know what I mean? And it's not, you know, I learned it's not, now I learned it's not they fault, just people like, They're bold to ask, but you struggle with that no when you're young.
But it's not even bold to ask. They're also coming from a different place. There is real desperation there. If they're calling you for $1,000, I don't even know how close you are to these people, but I'm guessing at the beginning that didn't cost you much. But when you're noticing that it's everybody. It's just starting to add up.
And it's not that the money add up. It's the ass start adding up. The story start.
The emotional drain.
The emotional drain starting adding up. Then when you are, then, like, are you making the right decision giving that person $4,000 when this person asked for $4,000 and said they'll pay you back? You know what I mean? And now it's like I already gave them money. I don't want to give them more money. But this person was probably the person who needed it and the person that's going to go on. Oh.
You know what I mean?
This person is gonna burn that bridge all because you felt good about like that's the homie or that's somebody that you felt like you had a stronger connection to in your past. So you make a lot of mistakes saying yes to people. And so no was like the hardest thing because if you told somebody no, they would really tell you how they feel.
Well, this is the thing. All of your relationships start changing there and you start seeing things perhaps you didn't want to see that are a circumstance around. Imagine telling your mama no.
And you have to. You have to.
And it's real desperation. Yeah. If she's asking, it is last resort stuff because she's already embarrassed you plenty and she doesn't want. No. Hell no. I can't do it.
Man, who am I? Like, I am, you know, I'm an enabler to everything that you want to do. And so, for me, it was like, ah, hell no, I ain't doing that, mama. Like, I used to call my mom, my dad, be like, what? I used to yell at him, be like, what the fuck? I'm in the NBA. Clean your shit up. Like God damn, like if I had a son like me, I'd be trying to get right because it's cool over here.
You know what I mean? And so it's like, it was that, it was that struggle. And so when you tell your mama no, man, it's hard. because you didn't ask me for a house, but I can't get you a house. You got these people with you. You know what I mean? I can't get you nothing because you got this to do with it. You know what I mean?
It's like, yeah, and then when I go to do it, I'm really trying to do it and help, and it's just like, it's a tug and pull. You know what I mean?
Do you remember what she said when you said no? Like what, like that. In just hearing it. Norma got a bad mouth.
I don't even think she remembers, but I remember everything. You know what I mean? It was just like you get cussed out. You get cussed out. You get told like you don't care. You know, you get called names. But I mean, that's just the nature. You know, that's just the nature of that's the consequences are what come with saying no.
You got to know when you say no, nobody going to be like, all right, you're right. How did you get good at no?
Where, where, when? Like I imagine.
I never got good at no. I just started avoiding people, I think. You got to get to, yeah. I just think, I would say my mom finally got right when I was like 28, 29, like my ninth or 10th year in the league. And so that was like, I would say after that it kind of became a little bit.
If you can say no to her, you can say no to anybody.
Yeah. Pretty much. But like my mom was never really like in my life like that. So it wasn't like saying no to her was like, I knew what that was, you know what I mean? But it was also like going back to the person for the 4,000, person with the 1,000, now you got 500, you got 200, you got $5 or $10. You know, and now you got all these people And each one of them has a story.
The dude who needs $50 may have the greatest story ever and he just wanted a burger. But you're tired. You're like, man, I ain't buying you shit. And it could have been like your old coach. And you're like, damn, dude. You see an old coach and you're like, man, you should at least buy me a burger. And it's like, man, buy you what?
And it's all because you've had all of these little micro asks and micro stories. And so it just kind of like, it's still this world, you know what I mean? It's just now you're in the world where you got money, nobody understands you, nobody cares to get to know you, right? They only see and hear, and you can imagine how frustrating that was for me. You're an ATM. Yeah.
How did you get to repair with your mother?
Yeah, me and my mom, great. We're great now. We talk every morning. She's been sober. She lives in Baton Rouge. I mean, we got a great relationship. Like, I would say, you know, In my NBA career, when I look up and say, damn, I may not make the Hall of Fame, you know what I mean? I don't have a championship. I played 13 great years.
And at the end of the day, like I'm sitting here, I got a relationship with my mama. You know what I mean? Like shit, it took this long, but like me and my mom, we rock. You know what I mean? And we talking, you know, it's like, so all the things that I'm starting to learn, you know, about my dad, I'm learning about me and like, you know, my mom is just, she's, she's great. She's fun. She's funny.
You know, she got a great personality and it's, and you know, it was worth the wait.
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We've talked very little about the professional basketball part of your story, which is ostensibly the thing that probably people care about the most. But before we go through some of that, can you take me through the injuries? Because when you say it could have been to the Hall of Fame, and when I say at the beginning, two-time All-Star is interesting, but this was a talent that I recognized.
Like when Dwayne Wade beat you in the playoffs, I'm like, oh, okay, Dwayne Wade, going to be something that's an all-timer because I know what's happening. I know what this is here. But your body, and I don't know how this starts, right?
Whether you hurt your ankle in high school and then you break or you tear up your knee in college and then other compensations happen no matter how healthy you are and little pieces of you start physically falling apart no matter how careful you are. Take me through all of the injuries because there are a lot of them.
All right, I broke my ankle when I was in ninth grade, and then I came back playing like a week out of a cast because I wanted to get recruited. Roy Williams thought I was handicapped when he came and recruited me four years later. That was a funny story. So I broke my ankle. I didn't let my ankle heal because I needed to play. So I played literally a week out of getting out of surgery.
Then I wind up at UCLA tearing my ACL. After I tear my ACL, I get to the league. I'm okay. My rookie year, I have loose cartilage in my knee. But I mean, you know, when you growing up back in that era, you don't really like, you ain't trying to sit on the training table. You know what I mean? Ain't no load management, none of that shit.
And so I remember my first year, my second year, I would have like this, what they would call like a floating piece of cartilage in your knee. And so I would run and the cartilage would get in the joint and I'd have to jump
shake my leg on the court so I could mobilize it then I had a small little surgery then for that then I hurt my back the next year that really kind of fucked everything up like I had herniated l4 l5 this And then that was the year we played Chase McGrady, I got max contract, but my back was crushed.
Then I had to go play in the Olympics, not the Olympics, but the Goodwill, whatever, World Championships, that disaster team that they always clown. I was on that team. But I was also hurt. because I had fucked my back up, but I just never told people. I was just trying to like, all right, I can get this right before training camp. So I would say for me, it was always like, I never was 100% ever.
I don't even think I was ever 90%.
You're always playing with some sort of pain, some sort of compensation. Because that was my life. You know what I mean?
That was literally my life. So when I got injured, it was almost like, Now they have my attention because I don't have nowhere to go. You know what I mean? And so I would rush back to play.
Like soon as I can, I remember, and I'm sure coaches and teammates will tell you, like there was a lot of times that I was not supposed to be playing and I just, like yo, if I can walk and I can barely move, I'll be able to go out there and play. And I never thought about Like, it was just kamikaze. You know what I mean? It's like, fuck it, ride or die.
And then as you get older, you start looking at, like, got to take better care of your body. But my body was like, you know what I mean? And I remember being with the Knicks. Shout out to Andy Barr and the trainers and Dr. Callahan, Dr. Answorth Allen. They did my last surgery with the Knicks. But, like, when I signed with the Knicks, I couldn't even walk. I could not walk, Dr. Callahan was like,
you may not even play again, let alone, you may not be able to walk straight. I just hurt my back, I was playing, somebody hit me, my back went out and I couldn't walk. And she was like, if you work hard, we'll take a chance on you. But we don't think that you're gonna be able to play this year. But we'll get you right and we'll work with you. And it was the lockout year.
I was back in a month and a half. You've got an unusual pain threshold, I would imagine, right? Yeah, dude, I've been through so much pain that if I can get back on the court or any time I walk in the gym, that's my sanctuary. You know what I mean?
Roy Williams thought you were handicapped, though?
Oh, Roy Williams thought I was a handicap. He was recruiting Paul Pierce, and that was the week I was out of my cast. So I was ninth grade, but I was on the end of the bench. And I had a broke ankle. So the coach would only put me in in garbage time, and I just moved like that. And Roy Williams was recruiting me in front of my grandma, and he was like, man, you know, I got Paul.
He was like, I always wondered. What happened to the kid? I think he was like the coach's son. I was like, coach's son? That was Coach Mike. He was like, man, little dude, handicap, you know what I mean? Like, handicap? Like, who the fuck on our team was handicapped?
He was like, man, little dude, like, he looked like he was the coach's son because he could play, and the coach played him, you know, but he would, like, throw him in there, but the kid just couldn't keep up. But he could play, but he just, he was like, there's something wrong with his leg. Like, he had a, you know, like, I was like, coach, that was me. He was like, man, no way. Get out of here.
I was like, yeah, that was me basically my ninth grade year trying to get on.
I really appreciate throughout all of this, the intimacy and the vulnerability. Over the course of the years, I have at various times tried to ask you some form in short interviews where you're not in a totally trusting place about the Clipper experience, at least in part, because I thought to myself, my God, that could have been and should have been for him such a beautiful story.
Yeah.
that seems from afar like he expected one thing and it was the complete opposite.
It was like, get out.
Of that thing. Basically, get out. You're being heckled by the owner in the stands and that person turns out to be very publicly a racist. There are all sorts of reported stories about him bringing people into the locker room and looking at showering basketball players and talking about their beautiful black bodies. Oh, man.
You have never shared any of these stories with me because you know they're going to get aggregated and you know it's going to be a whole thing.
Well, the thing is like the people who are telling the stories, right, are doing it for a whack ass TV show, you know what I mean? A whack ass documentary and I'm a storyteller so I know who was there, you know what I mean? No disrespect to Ramona Sherbourne but she wasn't even a, she was a rookie. when I got there.
And so I look at that and I look at people and say, oh, y'all just gonna take this story and run how y'all wanna run. Oh, y'all other athletes, y'all gonna take this story and wave a black power fist sign. Man, I'm not with none of that. You know what I mean?
Because what I had to do was I had to understand this man, right, to be able to articulate what type of person he was, what type of business he ran, and all the people who worked for him. And what they had to do, whether they wanted to or not. He's the boss. Yeah. And wherever their moral compass was, they was fucked too. So there's a lot of fuckery going on.
And so when you have somebody, and I have to make sure that people know, Donald Sterling is not a racist. He is a hate everybody-ist. He don't give a shit. He don't understand blacks, Latinos, Asians, white people. He don't understand shit. He's delusional. And so whatever he says to you is like whatever the fuck he's thinking. And he is beyond ignorant, right?
And so when you have that much money and you use the team as your scapegoat, if you use the team as a media play for your other business, like he wasn't a basketball fan. Basketball was just a real estate holding that he probably didn't even like, but he knew it gave him fame and notoriety and shit like that.
I would have to walk into the Clipper practice site and see the person in community relations bawling her eyes out. Now I gotta go to work, just like she at work, but I gotta stop Going into the gym, getting my shit together to make sure like, hey man, don't worry about it. You know what I mean? He ain't gonna do nothing.
I became now the only person who cared about other people because I saw with the Clippers, there was no care. Everybody was there telling on each other, snitching on each other, backstabbing people. And the people who were actually honest and working and hardworking that were scared and terrified, they had nowhere to go. You know what I mean? They had nowhere to go. And people need a paycheck.
You ain't getting no other job coming from the Clippers back then. Ain't nobody hiring no motherfuckers from the Clippers. So you are at the bottom of the bottom in the worst environment and industry You worked for him. It didn't matter with the team. The team was just a tool. The players were just tools, right? They were never to be understood by him.
And so when you have people like Ramona, you know, or other...
Well, not just that, because they were at the center. Before George Floyd, there's all sorts of stuff being moved around politically on black-white causes. Doc Rivers has to decide whether to boycott a game.
Oh, man, that's bullshit, man. That's bullshit. That's bullshit. I don't know the real story. I went in the locker. I went to that game. I literally went to that game because I wanted to see what they were going to do. You know what I mean? And when you look at that squad, none of them dudes was playing like all of a sudden, oh, you hella woke because the media say you gotta be woke.
If you was that woke, if you cared that much, if you was standing up to racism, if you wanted to make a statement, why the fuck didn't you not play that game? Suckers. They weak. It's weak. It was weak. Everybody in the league was ready to shut down for you. And what y'all do, y'all turn y'all jerseys over, ran out there, got y'all ass whooped, and asked for people to feel sorry for you.
And then here, you know, and then Doc standing out like, you know, like he a black figure. You know what I'm saying? For me, that's why I don't like talking about it, because I start picking apart all the pieces and saying the reason why I don't say nothing, because I got a lot to say, and I know what the fuck I gotta say, and then everybody else are opportunists in this situation.
So when opportunists are mining, I get out of that.
I've noticed that with you and I want to give you the space and context on all of it. But what if I were to push back with saying to you, look, basketball players for the Clippers also had to live in the same world that you experienced of where all employees of this.
No, that's not true. That's not true. That's not because I remember I went to work every day. My problem. with all the other players, was they didn't give a fuck. You know what I mean? And I could not, for the life of me, figure out, but that's why when we had the Lob City stuff, when we started that with Blake and DeAndre, when Blake got there, it was different, because Blake was different.
He was the number one pick. Him and DeAndre were on their way up, and Blake didn't give a fuck about none of it. And so I was finally starting to see, hold on, these young kids, they just hooping. I come from an era where I had to deal with owners and deal with all this shit and I'm seeing everything, they just seeing the gym, you know what I mean?
And so it became, I start to realize, damn dude, these young dudes, I need to be more like them. I need to care less. I care too much, right? Because I really felt like, yo, by the time I get three years with the Clippers, we will be where the Warriors are, right? That was your expectation? That was my expectation going in. Don't believe he was the coach, so that didn't work out well.
Lord have mercy. Hold on. We'll get back to this stuff for a second. But how is it that you could be so wrong signing, thinking that the Clippers were going to be one thing? And is it ego? Is it because you thought you were good enough to be able to be the change you want?
No, you know, Elton Brand, I was supposed to go there with Elton Brand and then he did some punk shit and signed with Philly and didn't tell me that he was signing with Philly. So I had already signed with the Clippers. So I was like, fuck it, I'm going home. I had made my mind up anyway. But I did think that the Clippers had At the time, they were literally right there.
So it was like, if they were playing games, it was like eighth, ninth, 10th, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th, it was all kind of like us, the Clippers, Denver, Golden State, all these new teams were trying to fight for positions. So I figured Clippers had the talent.
And with Elton Brand, you already got a big deal, so I can just, these next four or five years, I can just play traditional point guard shit, pass the ball, he get double teamed, shoot threes, and you know. So you go in thinking. I go in thinking like, oh man, I get to, I don't have to carry the team, you know what I mean? I don't have to do all the, I just play point guard.
I really just wanna play point guard and run offense and shit. I don't wanna do all this shit. That's why I went to the Clippers, because I felt like, all right, they got two big dudes. They got Coutinho, Mobley, you know what I mean? We got a cool four right now. Tim Thomas, we had size and talent and dogs. You just had a coach.
Once Elton Brand didn't come, then everything just kind of fell out. Marcus Camby we traded for. Marcus Camby show up to training camp Thursday and then don't show up for two weeks. He about to retire. I gotta go find Marcus Camby, sit with him. He like, man, fuck this shit. You know what I mean? Because Denver traded him. It's just all the shit that people go through. You know what I mean?
Right from the start, I could not walk in and play basketball. The very first day of media, the media guy comes up to me and say, look, he pulls me to the side, he said, I know you're having fun, I'm just gonna let you know, when he comes in here, don't get upset, don't get offended. He may or may not say something to you that'll offend you, or he may say some shit.
I'm like, what are you talking, this is media day, what are you talking about? I'm thinking a reporter. He's talking about the owner, dude. So he didn't say Donald Sterling. He just said he. He. He might come in here. He might come in here and say the wildest shit to you. Be careful. Don't get upset. Y'all in a good mood.
Because everybody would say, before I got there, when the season started, man, it's fucked up around here. Everybody has nothing but negative energy and negative shit to say.
You didn't know any of this beforehand?
I mean, no. Not like that. Yeah, not like that. All teams are dysfunctional. I just came from the Warriors. You know what I mean? When an owner, he'd be riding a bike when he hung over. You know what I mean? Everybody's got something. He was a hot mess. You know what I mean? But at the time, but not like this.
This was like, with the Warriors, like okay, that's the owner, you like him, you don't like him. It was a separation between what he does for the team versus what he do for himself. This situation was like, you cannot detach nobody from nothing. Everybody's a spy. Everybody's lying to move up or to save their face. And then Mike Dunleavy has all the power.
So he can literally say whatever the fuck you want to the owner or to anybody. Right. About anybody. And so like when you have leadership like that. It's a circus. I remember in training camp, I was like, man, this is fucked up. This is a circus. I ain't never seen no shit like this. I would say that every day in practice. I've never seen it.
I did not think that an NBA team could be ran like that. And you'd been some places at that point. You'd seen some. We had some bad years. I had just come off a bad year with Byron Scott where I got traded, and the Warriors was having a bad year, but it wasn't. Like, nothing was like this. This was like, man, Chris came in. We in practice. He grab a rope, lasso it around.
What I want them to do is pull the shit. Just all kind of people pulling each other's pants down, kicking water bottles over. It's like, man, this ain't no fun. This is a fucking circus show.
What is the context that people would need, again, with the space to do it, not worried about, because I'm so appreciative that we've done this this way, and I hate for you, the entirety of your career, I have felt like the back and forth with journalists isn't stimulating enough to you, isn't something that appeals to your greatest curiosities.
What are the things that people need to know as someone who was in the fire of that, the context that they don't have when you say, that wasn't actually a race war that was just a basketball team that was stuck under an owner that had an organization a profound dysfunction man it was it was just extreme dysfunction like it wasn't
It was just every day it was dysfunctional. You don't know what the fuck you're doing when you go to work. You don't know if you got anything. How do you go to the gym and not play basketball? We wouldn't scrimmage. We would just talk, went through plays. It became who the fuck wants to be here? Now you talking about stress?
PTSD, imagine can't do what you wanna do, how you wanna do it, but all they doin' is just tellin' you what to do, tellin' you, it's like Groundhog, tellin' you what to do. And I felt sorry for the people like, you know, you think like, Jason Powell, he's still there, the head trainer. Like, this dude is brilliant.
This dude is doin' all that he can, right, to solve a problem because the players keep getting hurt and they keep tellin' him no. Right, and so I'm watching. None of the competent people have power to do anything. Crazy. Undermined. Crazy, and so now you gotta be, everybody gotta be a little sneaky to get some shit done to benefit the players, you know what I mean?
Or the players have to go and come back, which you don't care, you gotta come back to the gym to get extra shots, because you realize, man, I ain't got no shots in practice in three weeks. And so the environment that was created made you not want to be in the gym. You just wanted to go to work, soon as your shit was over, you didn't want to see nobody.
Imagine living as a basketball player and not wanting to deal with, it was literally like, yo, this is a job that I hate. And when you go to work, your other teammates and homies are like, damn, man, what's wrong with you? You all right? Like, you don't look good. And then you play in the game. They're like, yo, what the fuck? Like, what's wrong with you?
And your homies and your friends here in L.A. who showing up to the games, they're like, yo, we came to see B.D. play. And it's like, I ain't know how to play basketball no more. These motherfuckers talking to me. Like, I can't.
There's got to be some joy around what you're doing. There has to be.
There's got to be freedom. For me, there's got to be freedom.
Artistic freedom.
Freedom, creativity, and like – I know what I'm doing out here. You know what I mean? I can't play. Support it, don't undermine it. Support, don't undermine. Then the next year, Vinny Del Negro. And you gotta think, the Clippers were going to have success because DeAndre, Blake, your cornerstones were getting better. You know what I mean? The younger guys were getting better.
And then Vinny the Snake, I call him Vinny the Snake, because he a lying motherfucker. Vinny the Snake, you know, he was just positioning to keep his job so he could, like he knew he had a good team and he could, they started bringing in the right people like once I left.
But I was like, damn dude, all we needed was, all I needed was one Chris Paul squad, like the Matt, Jamal, JJ, give me that team, like who I wanna win a championship.
uh we are out of time unfortunately we were just getting to some of the good basketball stuff but i will come back dude we will do it again and before you leave here just tell the people what you want them to know about what it is that you're doing in tech because you're a business mover and shaker you have a great deal of financial acumen and artistic interest so tell the people uh where it is and how it is they can support
some of what it is you're doing? It's teambig.io. The company is called Business Inside the Game, so it's a platform. I talk about business, interview leaders, and we do mixers, summits, and we bring entrepreneurs and the right people together in the right space. So that's teambig.io. And then BlackSanta.com, you can support the brand.
We have, you know, part of the proceeds go to various different charities. And so we're just trying to have our own Black Santa Claus and bring our community together.
I will tell the audience, which is a very supportive financial audience, that BlackSanta.com is a thing that you want to be supporting because he is very interested in helping people. Yes. Thank you for the candor. We finally did this one right. This was good. No, you've been fucking right. We finally did it correctly. It's nice seeing you again, buddy.
Good to see you, my guy.
You've been fucking with me for 20 years.
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