The San Antonio small forward – and New York City native – spoke ahead of Wednesday night’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
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Video Transcript
Once again, going back to your New York roots.
When you look at your professional story, undrafted, the way you had to fight your way through, making your s- you know, getting here to the Spurs and earning that role, now you’re in the NBA finals.
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How does that play in to the way that you were raised and helped you along the way to get to this point?
Oh, for sure.
I mean, my parents did, in, in my opinion, I got the best parents ever.
They did a really good job of just, you know, making sure that me and my brother were on the same track, on the, on the best track possible.
keeping us out of trouble, keeping us in the parks, keeping us, you know, playing sports and doing stuff like that.
And then also, like I was, like I was saying before, teaching us to be honest, teaching us to be coachable, to be standup kids.
You know, stand on what we believe in and stuff like that.
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So it’s been pretty good.
Same row on the right side here in the aisle.
Hey, Julian.
Hey.
Adam Rossow with Spectrum News.
On that note, you know, your journey, now you’re about to start the NBA finals.
Like, why?
Why are you here?
Why do you think you persevered and were able to, to get where you are right now?
I think it’s just where I, where I grew up from, who raised me and stuff like that.
The people I’m around, the people I surround myself with.
They do a pretty good job of just keeping me on the right track, helping me stay even keel and, and stuff like that.
But, yeah.
Go ahead, Christian.
Over here on the right.
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Julian.
Julian, Christian Winfield here, New York Daily News.
also from the towns, went to Bannockburn.
There you go.
question for you.
Just, you know what it means to New York City to be back in the NBA finals as someone who’s from there.
Now on the other side, are, are you ready to be the villain in, in your own hometown when you go back?
Yeah, for, for- Like, what’s that gonna be like for you?
For sure.
For sure.
obviously, you know, I know a lot of I was telling somebody, I actually have a lot of friends who are New York fans, and I just, I would love to spoil their, their plans.
I would love to.
it’d just be fun.
Obviously, you know, going back there and competing for a championship is great, but I personally wanna win.
So we’ll just see how it goes.