Metta World Peace

We wasn't thinking about generational wealth, infrastructure planning.

We wasn't thinking like that back then.

We had to catch up.

So there were so many different things that we've been through as athletes.

Being a business owner today, I never thought in a million years that I would be doing what I'm doing now.

Yeah, we all have a perception, right?

So as a tough guy, things that made me tough, I wish I didn't have to go through.

Like playing basketball in Far Rockaway as a 12-year-old in Hamels Projects and at the free throw line, my friend getting hit over the head with an old E40-ounce bottle.

because we were playing hard in someone else's neighborhood.

Or to having to travel to a game somewhere and having to put the ratchets in your bag just to make sure that nothing goes down.

The stuff that made me tough, that people loved, is not what I would want for myself or my son or my children.

I wish I did not have to be tough.

I wish I could have just been vulnerable the whole time, but I had to.

Because of these different circumstances in the city.

You know, when you come from the biggest federal housing project in America, yeah, you got some protection because you're a baller.

But at the same time, you become friends with different people.

And when things happen to your friends, you got to make a decision now.

You in or you out?

How are you going to navigate that?

So the things that made me tough and fearless is things I wish I did not have to go through.