Growing up, people will tell you that you have a better chance to become an astronaut than becoming an NBA player. So when you finally get to the NBA, you've beat the odds. So when you put on that jersey, everything else is downhill.
Interpretation
Success is achieved by overcoming difficult odds, and reaching your goals is a significant accomplishment.
Clyde Drexler's quote highlights the incredible odds faced by aspiring NBA players compared to other professions, like becoming an astronaut. It emphasizes that achieving a dream that many consider improbable is a profound success, and once that dream is realized, the challenges that follow seem less daunting in comparison.
In practice
During a motivational speech to youth aspiring to play basketball.
Going to the Portland Trail Blazers, who actually took the time to invest in me, was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me in my career. I got to a small market where I could focus on basketball, basketball, basketball. No distractions.
The good life, as it is popularly conceived, typically involves acquiring mastery in one's work, thus gaining for oneself better terms - or means to rewards, whether material, like wealth, or nonmaterial - an experience we may call 'prospering.'
Most people think they want more money than they really do, and they settle for a lot less than they could get
I don't know if I believe in luck. I think I'm very fortunate.
The best evaluation I can make of a player is to look in his eyes and see how scared they are.
It's ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn't even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.
We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.
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