"As it turns out, I made the right decision to jump straight from high school to the NBA because I was a lottery pick, I got a good multimillion-dollar contract and I'm proving that I indeed can play in the NBA.

"It's good that I became a pro early, too, because I was doing some real stupid things as a kid growing up in Compton, Calif. I remember me and my cousins walking across a rusty metal pipe that spanned across a ditch that was 50 to 75 feet deep. Pipes like that ran from mountain to mountain. I walked part of the way, stopped because I'm scared of heights and crawled the rest of the way. The pipe was about 50 yards long and 24 inches in diameter.

"But if I had slipped and fallen off that pipe, I could have gotten killed. So maybe turning pro saved me because it took me away from doing silly, dangerous stuff like that.

"I still have a long way to go and a lot of hard work to do before I accomplish the things I want to accomplish in the NBA. It hasn't been fun losing with the Bulls. But we are becoming better as a team and I'm making progress as a player. It's a beautiful life.

"What people must understand about me, though, is that my ambition is not just to be a successful NBA player. I want to be well-educated. That's why I plan to go to college and get a degree. I don't want to be stuck with just a high school education. I think I need to further myself educationally so that I can become a more well-rounded person.

Via Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago Bulls

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