My greatest gift that I have in life is basketball.

I do envision championship basketball and when you talk about championship basketball, you talk about a good defensive team, you talk about a good offensive team and you talk about a team that really has its act together once they step on the floor. Our goal is to dominate the east and we must continue to dominate the east so that we can have another return to the NBA Finals. And I think mentally we have to become a tougher basketball team. I think mental toughness is going to be the thing that makes us champions.

No team has really had to rebuild from this altitude in terms of where we started. So it's a very unconventional way of getting young players and draft picks in a very short period of time. This will actually help us tremendously.

It’s something that I have been blessed with in terms of playing the game and being able to understand the game. Not being able to exercise that gift while I was out of the game, I really found a void in myself and a hole in my soul. I said the biggest problem that I have had in that time was that I woke up and I didn’t go to the gym. I have been successful in a lot of other areas but not having the ability to exercise the greatest gift that I have, which is basketball, you know I have missed it.

John is doing the best job that he possibly can do with the situation that he was dealt with. I have great respect for him and I wish him and the Bulls' organization nothing but success.

We should be extremely careful not to give him something that he doesn't have and not to keep putting him in a light of a patient or someone who is sick, because doctors have cleared him and checked him out and said that he doesn't have a condition. We need to be extremely sensitive to him and not keep saying that he has this because clearly he doesn't.