Udonis Haslem
Udonis Haslem
Udonis Johneal Haslemis an American professional basketball player for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association. He played college basketball for the University of Florida, where he was a key member of four Florida Gators NCAA tournament teams. He played professional basketball in France for a year, and then signed with the Miami Heat in 2003. He has won three NBA championships while playing for the Heat...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth9 June 1980
CityMiami, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I've learned a lot from the experiences that I went through in high school, through college and overseas, and just everything in life. That is what prepared me for coming into the NBA, being undersized, no recognition, not getting anything easy, and I have been fortunate to prosper in this league.
I'm definitely not packing seven suits. We obviously have a job to do. There's not too many jobs where people can play and make the money we make. You just focus on getting your rest, bundle up for different climates, eat right and deal with all the different time zones and everything else.
I'm usually taking my charges on somebody driving to the basket out of control and their momentum is coming toward me. Whereas the Big Guy is just taking one step back and guys are falling. He doesn't really even have enough momentum to charge those guys.
I never heard the music he was playing in my life, and I've never seen the dances he was doing in my life. It was definitely nothing of this decade. It was definitely nothing that anybody of this era would know about.
I'm happy we won. I felt really bad to sit in the locker room and not be out there to help my team. I want to apologize to them, the organization and the fans.
Anytime you start out slow like that it's a concern. You don't want to have the reputation of being a slow-starting team because you're not always going to be able to come back. We've been fortunate we've come back and won, but it could easily have gone the other way.
If you're not making shots and you're not playing defense, you get a score like we got.
If you look at the better teams in the league when they get a team down they finish out the game. That's kind of what separates us from those teams right now is playing 48-minute games.
Instead of saying, 'This guy is supposed to rotate here and this guy is supposed to rotate there,' if you see it, just pull the trigger and cover for that guy, and somebody has to cover for you. That's all out of reaction and you don't have to think about it.
I just went out and played ball tonight. I took advantage of my opportunities.
It's very important to execute down the stretch and get the stops, but by the same token, we want to put the games away a little earlier.
It's kind of like fool's gold. We're definitely making plays at the end of games to win, but at the same time we don't want to have to rely on that going into Detroit or with the playoffs coming up.
They pretty much had us dead in the water.
It's a tremendous loss. No matter how much time he gets or what the situation is, he's one of the guys you could count on every night to give us everything he has.