“As a youngster, my mother and father always drilled into my head having something to fall back on. My father was kind of funny. I'd score 40 points. I'd come home and say, 'Look dad, I scored 40.' He'd never have a smile on his face. He'd be like, 'I saw that move you did. What if you'd hurt your knee?'”

“The best quality about Kobe Bryant? You want me to be honest? I don't know. I'll tell you why. I open my arms to everybody. But he never stepped forward for the embrace. So I never really got to know him. I don't know anything about him, and it's kinda sad.”

“As a youngster, my mother and father always drilled into my head having something to fall back on. My father was kind of funny. I'd score 40 points. I'd come home and say, 'Look dad, I scored 40.' He'd never have a smile on his face. He'd be like, 'I saw that move you did. What if you'd hurt your knee?'”

“I'm a weird big guy. Doing rapping, doing movies. Do a lot of stuff. But always do things the right way.”

“I'm on a mission. And I know the older I get, I may lose a step or two, but it's all up in the medulla oblongata. I've got a lot up there. I've got a lot of knowledge... in this medulla oblongata.”

“Everything happens for a reason. I'm used to it, I prepare for it. Like I say, at the end of the day, those in charge of their own destiny are going to do what's right for them and their family.”

“If you got the game, you got the game. That's why Tiger Woods is out there playing golf with Greg Norman.”

“I'm tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.”

“And I want to do it the right way, like everybody else, not just a famous figurehead that gets a job because he is a famous basketball player. I want to really learn the business.”

“Toward the end of Carmel's life, the perception of super talls shifted dramatically, thanks largely to televised NBA games, By 1975, pretty much everyone had seen super tall people on TV, in the context of being celebrated in front of sold-out basketball arenas. This new frame of reference could not have been more positive. By 1995 Shaquille O'Neal was known as The Man of Steel, not the Traveling Human Giant. The idea of super tall people as freaks was replaced by the idea of super tall people as amazing athletes.”