The reluctant king; the team-first superstar and short-list MVP candidate is fine with leading Sacramento to the promised land—just don't ask him to brag about it

Basketball Digest, May-June, 2004 by Brett Ballantini

BD: You and Dirk Nowitzki are the first tall sharpshooters ever in the NBA. Does it give you some pride to know you're unlike any player who's come before you, combining such size and shooting skill?

PS: Dirk and I have a different game. He's more of a power forward who can use his quickness and shooting ability to score over big guys. He's getting better and is taking his team to the playoffs each and every year. He's doing a great job. We are different players except we both are great shooters from beyond the arc. I have to run up and down the floor and compete with the smaller guys.

BD: Clearly defense is important to you and you've improved in that area. Is that just part of trying to become the best all-around player you can be?

PS: At the beginning of my career I understood that to stay in the game I had to play defense. [Laughs] In my first year, if the man I was guarding scored three straight times, I was taken out. I learned the hard way that you have to challenge the good offensive players. You have to at least try. In the intervening years I got more experience and became more focused on what opponents like to do on the offensive end, and that helped my defense. All those things, defense, rebounding, all are important to have a complete game.

BD: You do a lot of instructing on the floor and bench with some of the younger guys like Darius Songalia and Gerald Wallace. Is that something you're more and more comfortable with doing?

PS: When you're not getting as much playing time, you need to get whatever help you can. Guys like Darius and Gerald can help us, so I'm trying to help them in the same way other players helped me when I wasn't getting as many minutes. That's how things work here.

BD: For the first time the U.S. is learning it's not the dominant basketball nation. Does the training and education you get as an international player give you an advantage over players from the U.S.?

PS: I don't know. It seems to me that the main thing is that now more NBA teams have confidence in drafting Europeans. Six or eight years ago, it wasn't like that. We had to prove ourselves. You would never have gotten minutes back then before going out there and proving yourself.

The American players are more athletic, sure, but I don't know if they're more skilled. Some of them are. This is the best league in the world, so you can't play here without skills. But now the league is filled with good players from all over.

BD: Why don't more teams play a more uptempo game like the Kings do? Does your conditioning and willingness to get out on the break give you an advantage vs. other teams?

PS: I can't say. More teams--the Bucks, Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets--are playing more up and down. But you have to have the players who can fit into that kind of system. It's a good match for us, but we also know that in order to be a good team, you have to have a good half-court offense, too, especially in the playoffs.

We've grown up in the last few years and understand that defense is so important, and half-court offense is important too, when it comes to the playoffs. Actually, it's patience that will be what gets us [to the Finals].