I want to thank the Spurs organization, they brought everybody out here, and I appreciate that. And I love you, Peter, Red McCombs, Angelo Drossos, those guys were the masterminds for bringing me in
and they had more vision, more foresight than I did, so I wanna thank you guys for that. I wanna thank all my teammates. Timmy, you're my man!
Have any of you guys ever got on your knees and prayed really hard for something? That was my answer to prayer right there.
The best power forward ever ever played the game, that's what I say. Avery Johnson, my partner, the preacher. Thank you.
And I've had a long trail of coaches who've helped me get here, not the least of which is Mr. Larry Brown here. And I wanna mention these two guys, because the reason I brought them up here is, both of them are basketball geniuses,
one as a player, and one as a coach, and both of them have had a great influence in my life. The original Mr. San Antonio, George Gervin, laid the foundation.
He laid the foundation that I always felt like I was trying to live up to and build on, and we took what he and all those great Spurs that were there before us, so George has always meant a great deal to me.
And John Lucas made me beat your 63 point record, it felt good! And Larry Brown, my first coach in the NBA.
The Spurs really went out of their way to show me and show the city of San Antonio that they were serious about trying to win a championship, so they brought in a basketball genius like Larry.
And Larry saw something in me, and he was willing to push me and cajole me and encourage me. He spent a lot of time with me after practice working on my post moves,
