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.
When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.
True success is reaching our potential without compromising our values.
Achievers can almost literally taste success because they imagine their goals in such vivid detail. Setbacks only seem to add spice and favor to the final taste of victory.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Set a goal to become a millionaire for what it makes of you to achieve it. Do it for the skills you have to learn and the person you have to become.
There are many stars and a few super-stars in sport. There are champions who bag a coronet now and then, and there are others who dominate some game year after year. In other words there are Bobby Jones and Helen Wills.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.