http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/business/yourmoney/17boss.html?8dpc


Mom, Bob Knight and Me
As told to GLENN RIFKIN

Published: October 17, 2004
IN my house, my mother, Mary, ruled the roost. She drove me hard.

One of the most important lessons happened in my neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago. You had to fight every day there, or people would take your money and make life miserable.

In third grade, I had my first fight and got beat up really bad. I ran home crying and bloody. My mother made me go back outside and fight the kid again, and he beat me up again. That night, my brothers showed me how to box and wrestle and some different moves.

The next day, I had to fight the kid again. This time I won, and that was the last time we fought.

I idolized my older brother Larry and wanted to be like him. He was living in the fast lane, pimping and hanging out a lot on the street.

One day, when I was 13, I stole his clothes and put them on, and there I was, walking down the street in his big hat, shoes, pants, trying to act like him.

He pulled up in his car, and I tried to run away in his shoes, which were too big for me. He sat me down and said, "The road that I'm on is the one I have to be on, but you have a choice to pick a different road." That was an important day in my life, a turning point.

When I played basketball at Indiana University, Coach Bob Knight talked about the same things as my mother. It was like turning on a tape recorder and hearing my mother talk about doing the right thing, living the right way, going to class, working hard and being a gentleman.

But I always thought he was soft, compared to my mother.

I left Indiana after my sophomore year to go to the N.B.A. And it was that summer, before I got to the N.B.A., that I played with Magic Johnson; George Gervin, the "Iceman"; Mark Aguirre; and others.

One night in Memphis, we had just finished playing a game and it was 4 in the morning and a group of us were just sitting in the hotel hallway.

"Ice" was holding court. He just went down the line and spent a half-hour or more talking to each of us about playing in the N.B.A., about how good we could be. We had a 6:30 a.m. flight and we never went to our rooms. We just grabbed our bags and went to the airport.

But that was a special night. I started feeling confident that I could make it in the N.B.A. and do well.

When I was playing for the Detroit Pistons, Bill Davidson, the owner, let me travel with him and see how he handled his business and really opened my eyes to a new way of living. It really piqued my interest and made me dream bigger dreams.

I started thinking about business before my playing days were over. Magic, Mark and I talked about the opportunities in front of us and how we should take advantage of these opportunities during our playing days.

I bought the Continental Basketball Association in 1999, when it was near bankruptcy, and had started to turn it around. I was offered the head coaching job with the Indiana Pacers, and I thought the N.B.A. would let me do both. But the N.B.A., unbeknownst to me, was planning its own minor league. So I was forced to sell the C.B.A. I knew I could make it work. But the choice put to me was that if I kept my minor league, I could never be part of the N.B.A. again.

One of the biggest problems I have with my N.B.A. generation is that we are letting the young guys entering the N.B.A. down. We have a generation of men who aren't doing the job, from a leadership standpoint, with the young people coming into our league, especially those right out of high school.

I'm very hard on all our players and our coaching staff. I talk to them about being a man, about their values and not letting their occupation define the person they are. It's tough to do, but you have to do it.

My definition of success is a championship. Nothing else will suffice.

so Isiah was a pimp. that's too bad about the cba though. alot of people get it twisted thinking he did it for the money.