00:02¿Por qué te gusta el básquetbol?
00:06Me enamoré con el básquetbol por el Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
00:10quien fue un campeón de seis veces y jugó para los Lakers.
00:16Él era mi jugador favorito, así que él fue mi primera inspiración para lograr el NBA.
00:23Ok. Ok. Overcoming an addiction to alcohol is a very hard process.
00:32What lessons did you learn?
00:34What lessons did I learn from it? Trust in God.
00:38Trust in God. And not to try to take on everything by myself.
00:43Take the weight of the world on my shoulders alone.
00:47No. Have friends that would be there to support me.
00:51And also, it taught me that I can live a happy life without the alcohol.
00:59Ok. And what would you like people to remember you by in terms of your career in the NBA
01:08and your work as an ambassador after your career as a career end?
01:17That's a great question.
01:19Because sometimes I hear from people a lot that, oh, he only played for three years.
01:24But what they don't understand is that I'm one of less than 1% of people around the world to
01:31have done that.
01:32So it doesn't matter if it was for one day, one month, I still did it.
01:38And there's so many millions of people who will never get the opportunity to.
01:45I love the fact that it allowed me to travel the world and experience other cultures.
01:52It allowed me to teach young players from different cultures what it takes to get to the university,
01:59what it takes to get to the NBA or to become a professional.
02:04Three of my former players in China are professional basketball players now in China.
02:09And two of them just won their first championship with the Shanghai Sharks.
02:13So, you know, I'm very, very proud of them.
02:16And I'm blessed that I had an opportunity to give them some guidance along their path.
02:23For the last one, a message that you would like to give to young people in Costa Rica sparring to
02:37play basketball professionally?
02:39Yes. When you train, and this is something that I explain to the players of my academy and other academies.
02:46I talk to other players as well. I tell them, don't train pura vida.
02:51If you want, if you have high goals, you can't train pura vida.
02:56Because pura vida looks so relaxed, like you're not trying, you're not working hard.
03:02And you want to always work hard whenever you have a high goal.
03:07That's the only way you're going to reach it.
03:09So, work hard. Work hard. You have to learn how to be disciplined.
03:14You have to learn how to sacrifice.
03:16What I mean by that is every time there's a holiday, everyone leaves.
03:21No one's here to train.
03:24I stayed home and I trained because I had a high goal to get to.
03:28And so I didn't go to the party.
03:30I didn't go to every holiday because I had a goal that I had to get to.
03:37So I had to have discipline to get up, to go to the park, to dribble, to shoot.
03:42You know, if I couldn't go to the park outside on the street, dribble my basketball.
03:48Use my imagination to play one-on-one against Michael Jordan or one-on-one against Magic Johnson, whoever, from
03:55back in that time.
03:57Kids don't do that. Very few do that.
04:00And so I want to help change that to allow other players, to allow more players to get opportunities to
04:06be seen and receive scholarships abroad.
04:10That's my ultimate goal, to help as many TECO youth as possible through basketball earn scholarships.
04:17Thank you very much.
04:18Thank you very much.
