11/30/2007 - 15:47
The Knee, the Loss, the Teachers and Childhood
by Tyson Chandler

My knee is feeling a lot better. I started practicing again. I've practiced the last couple of days and it's just getting stronger. It's one of those cases where, when I hyperextended it, all the muscles and nerves fell asleep. I don't know if that's the right term, but they're telling me you just gotta wake the muscles back up and that's a process. The last couple of days it's feeling stronger and stronger, but I'm still not at 100 percent.

I don't like it during games, but for practices, I've been wearing a brace. I hate wearing anything different in games; I guess I'm funny like that. I don't like changing anything. I'm a little superstitious and I'll blame it on that. If I got my knee brace on and things are different, I'll throw it off because I feel like it's slowing me down or something.

LOSING TO MINNESOTA
Monday was one of those losses that keep a sour taste in your mouth. So everybody was frustrated the day afterwards. Everybody was upset, I think, from top to bottom, the whole organization, especially the players and coaching staff.

But I'm the type of person where, when something goes wrong like that, I try to look at what I can do to help the situation. That may be just talking to some people, or it may be getting in the gym and hitting it a little harder for myself. So, the last couple of days, I tried to practice harder. I went at the weights more, focusing more, just because I think people kinda feed off that.

Atlanta's been playing well and actually surprising some teams in the league, beating Dallas and beating other teams. So, tonight's one of those games that, I know for sure, we're not going to take lightly, because obviously we're coming off a loss to Minnesota. So, I expect everybody to come out hard and prove to everybody that OK, we had a hiccup, but that's all it was.

FOR NEW ORLEANS
I'm teaming up with the Hornets and I'm starting Rebound to Rebound. And what that's gonna do is for every rebound I get, I'm gonna donate money for teachers to get back in their homes. It's for teachers that haven't come back to New Orleans yet, to help them get back in their homes and back on their feet. And a lot of organizations are gonna match what I've donated, which is gonna really help.

I jumped at the idea when I heard about it, because what people don't realize is that a lot of teachers, doctors, a lot of the people that make up New Orleans, are not back yet. A lot of the teachers lost their homes and, as we know, teachers don't make as much as they should. They got hit hard too and it's hard for them to actually get back to their daily lives. So a lot of them are still living in Texas and the surrounding cities, and they're not coming back to New Orleans. Therefore, obviously our schools out here are not back up and running the way they should be.

So, we're running around preaching Read to Achieve and we're running around preaching education first. How can we be preaching that when we're not willing to get our teachers back here? So, they started this and it's focused on getting teachers back in their homes and I'm a part of that, which I'm really happy about.

MY STORY, PART I
I grew up on a farm in Hanford, California. It's a small, country town where everybody knows absolutely everybody and everybody refers to you by your last name. So like, your parents have known their parents and they're like, "Oh, they're Threadgills." That's my family's name. Or "Oh, they're Joneses." Everybody knows you by your last name.

I was like, in love with my grandfather growing up. I just admired him. He would get up at like four something. So, I would try to get up before him. He would always drink his coffee and go off to work, or do things around the house. We grew crops and we had pigs and cows and stuff like that. He would do that and then go to work. I would try to get up before him and be waiting at the kitchen table with my hot cocoa. And then I would try to stay up under him the whole time, so he would be like, "C'mon, you want to go to work with me?" And he would let me go to work with him every now and then.

But basically, we would were excited about feeding the cows and calves and stuff like that. I didn't have chores, except raking the leaves and mowing the lawn, but we would have fun with it.

They still have the farm, but there's no more animals on there, except chickens running around, and they've got a donkey. You know you're country when you got a pet donkey. Ha ha.

We moved to San Bernardino when I was like nine or 10. My mom just wanted a better life, because where I'm from it's like, if you don't leave there, you kinda settle. So, my mom wanted more. It's a small country town and there's really nothing exciting. You got family, and that's the best obviously. That's what you look forward to. But when you're in the city, there's nice homes, nice cars, nice clothes. There's all these things that are around you that pushes you and drives you to want to do better.

In the country, it's nothing like that. There's no Louis Vuitton stores. There's no Gucci stores. There's barely a mall, so it's like, "I'm alright with what I got." So, my mom didn't want that for me and the generations behind me, so she moved us to San Bernardino, which was the closest thing to L.A. without being in L.A., and the thing she could afford.

So she moved me there, and that's when I woke up to the whole city life. I had no clue about what went on.

I remember on the playground, I was going up to everybody like, "Hi, how are you doing?" and trying to introduce myself. And the dudes were like, "What the heck are you so happy for? Why are you smiling all the time? You got a problem with me? Why are saying 'hi' to my girl?"

I just got into it everyday, and I was like, "What is wrong with people?" So, this dude Sol Albert came up to me and was like, "Yo man, where are you from?" I told him where I was from and he said, "You can't act like that around here. You can't be so nice. These dudes are gonna test you everyday. They're gonna try to fight you. They're gonna take stuff from you. You gotta act like you're tough."

He said, "Roll with me and I'll teach you." He ran the schoolyard. So I hooked up with him and he showed me the ropes. He ended up being my best friend.

But I got my bike stolen and everything else, because I was way too friendly. Dudes would come over, "Hey man, could I ride your bike?"

"Sure!"

I would see the dude riding off to the sunset like, "Hey, you wanna come back?"

And when we lived in San Bernardino, we lived right next to the projects. There was drugs going on, killing, prostitution.

My mom and my stepfather got together around the same time. They had a car and we went to the laundromat. A drug addict stole the car stereo out of the car. A couple of days later, the dude came to our house trying to sell us our own radio. My dad lost it.

That's the kind of stuff I grew up dealing with. You couldn't leave the kids' tricycles and stuff on the porch, because they would take anything.

BASKETBALL AND ME
In school, everybody played football, because that was like the schoolyard thing. Most of the kids who went to my school played Pop Warner. So if you were hanging out with your buddies, you were playing football. So, I was playing football and just kinda messing around with basketball.

I was living in Colton (right next to San Bernardino) at the time. And I went to one of my buddies' house and he played basketball, and I didn't know. We were in the pool playing around and I was picking him up, dunking him and slamming him, because I was obviously bigger than him. And then his coach came to pick him up. He walked by the pool and then he went inside to tell his mom to get my buddy for practice.

So, when he was looking out, he was like, "Why are you letting a grown man play with your son like that. He's way too rough."

So the mom got upset, ran outside and was like, "Who?"

"The guy right there."

She's like, "That's no man. That's Tyson. He's in his class."

So, the coach said, "Hey, your name is Tyson? Get out of the pool." And so I got out and I when I stood up, I was tall and he was like, "Oh my God. You're coming to the gym with me right now."

I said, "Ummm, OK. I gotta tell my mom." So he took me back to my mom's house, talked to my mom, and my mom said, "Sure, he can play." And ever since then, I've been playing basketball.

It was really fun playing when it was just for fun. Then when it became too serious for me, I was drawn back from it a little bit, because I had never played it. I shied away from it. I almost wanted to stop going to practice. And then I actually had to get over that hump.

I had a point guard, Chris Smith. He ended up going to Cal State Fullerton and playing. He was the best point guard in our area at the time. He was like, "I'm gonna pass you the ball every single time until you make a layup." Because I remember I kept missing layups and I told him, "Don't pass it to me no more. I'll just get the rebounds."

He said, "If you miss it, just keep shooting." And so he did that, and he got my confidence up.

And it's funny that I'm saying this now, because Chris Paul pretty much did the same thing to me when I got traded to the Hornets.

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