Unique player hopes to return to Warriors
Q: You’ve been credited with the best tweet of the championship series when you tweeted. “I’m the only person ever with a rat tail and an NBA championship ring, let that sink in.” Did you get a lot of feedback on that?
A: I did, I got a lot of retweets and responses. But I don’t understand why, because it’s a fact.
Q: What are you gonna do? Are you gonna come back next year? Let’s get right to it.
A: I hope so.
Q: What is your mind-set, JaVale? Because you fit in with the team perfectly. You were the piece they didn’t have, and you provided a lot of things for them both offensively and defensively.
A: Yeah, it’s definitely gonna be a hard decision, especially coming off a championship and having the same core coming back. That would be amazing. I just hope the money is right and everything. I basically just want to do the best thing for my family, and hopefully it’s here with the Warriors.
Q: When did you get your first indication last summer that the Warriors were interested in you, and what did you think?
A: My agent called me and then Steve Kerr called me; it was late, like three weeks before training camp. He told me they could use me and my rim protection and basically everything I do.
Q: Did you think this was a perfect fit?
A: My first thought was that they didn’t have a player like me. I’ve been around the league long enough to know it’s random. I could go and they might need me but they might not play me that much, but I got to contribute to the championship and that’s what I’m really happy about.
Q: I know you don’t want to go over it too much, but was there ever anything personal with you and Shaq?
A: Nothing that I know of, nothing personal on my end. It was definitely an amazing thing to see Steve Kerr and my teammates stand up for me. I’m not saying I was asking for that but they just did it, that’s what brothers do. It was early in the season and I hadn’t even been there that long, so it was definitely something that kept me driven and working hard for my teammates because they looked out for me so I had to look out for them.
Q: You came into the league in the 2008-09 season, what do you think is the key to Warriors’ chemistry? What brings this team together?
A: There’s a lot of nitpicking that NBA teams do that the Golden State Warriors aren’t worried about. I’ve been on teams where if you don’t come out to practice in the right jersey you get fined $500. Here you can come out in your hoodie, wear your red T-shirt, you can wear whatever you want. They’re not worried about material things like that, they’re worried about basketball. If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing on the court then, OK, you need to do this or do that. It’s a whole bunch of stuff on other teams you shouldn’t be thinking about, you should be thinking about basketball.