The preseason is upon the Bulls, and
Dime magazine featured the Bulls' Amare Stoudemire. Here's the pseudo-fake interview (most of it is true)...
Amare Against the World
By Isaac Perry and Stan Smith
Watch as a child is raised out of the dust of poverty. Watch as his father dies, his mother leaves and adulthood comes early one morning and embraces him as if he were 21 instead of 12. Watch as his body grows, almost prematurely, until his arms and torso swell with unbridled power and his legs seem able to propel him into the sky. Watch him on the playground. Shortie got game. His older brother has more game. But lil’ man? Amare? He’s special. He’ll bring good fortune to everyone that adores him and stays true to him. He’ll open his mother’s jail cell and beckon her to a new life. He’ll assuage the hurt feelings inflicted by his father’s ghost. He’ll resurrect the hope that had long since died in his hometown of Lake Wales, Fla. He’ll show everyone that he is more than just a basketball player. Watch.
We speak on the phone the day before he begins training camp, his first camp as a Chicago Bull. Amare Stoudemire talks about his trials and tribulations. And his triumphs. He never leaves those out. The 21-year-old is adamant about one thing: he has never been — nor will he ever be — conquered.
Amare believes he has been chosen to lead. It’s written all over his chest. And it’s in his voice. Stoudemire’s baritone is filled with the absolute absence of doubt or uncertainty. He begins the answers to many questions with the phrase: “Oh, no question.”
But whose life is without question, especially one as unordinary as Stoudemire’s? He lost his father at the age of 12 and saw his mother, Carrie Stoudemire, go in and out of prison (for theft and forgery convictions) throughout his adolescence, and he changed schools so often that he might as well have kept his luggage in his locker. He raised himself amidst it all, fending off the vultures and sharks who smelled the blood of his future: the NBA contracts and endorsement deals that would one day make him rich. Despite playing only two years of high school basketball, Amare Stoudemire was a hot prospect, a status achieved mostly due to the promise of his game: a furious, albeit one- or two-dimensional combination of poise and power. Anyone who watched Amare play in high school could guess at the possibilities of his future. One thing was clear, though: Amare Stoudemire was a man before he signed his first pro contract. He was a man not because the NBA made him so, not because the lush life of big money, fast cars and beautiful women fooled him into thinking he’d achieved manhood. No, he was made into a man because his greatest adversary, the world that surrounded him and tried to hurt him, had also chosen him. Beat up on him to force him to fight back, not with his fists, but with his mind. For as long as he can remember it has been Amare Stoudemire vs. a world hell-bent on wrecking havoc within him, a world poised to shatter him the more he refused to break.
Sitting in his hotel room in Deerfield, Illinois, preparing for his first full season with teammates LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki and Colicky Boy, Amare Stoudemire speaks to me over the phone. I ask a series of questions to a man who has never had room for them in his life. Questions didn’t help him, his mother or his siblings survive once his father was gone. Questions didn’t help deal with the pain of missing Hazell, his older brother, when Hazell was sent to prison on drug and sexual abuse charges (he was released this past summer). Questions didn’t help him dominate Western Conference veterans his first season, and questions damn sure didn’t make him the first straight-from-high school player to win the Rookie of the Year award. Answers did that. Amare Stoudemire followed the reasoning of his spiritual faith, the wisdom of those he deemed his loved ones. And, finally, he paid attention to the musings of a dead poet. His answer to one question, the one where I ask him about the most influential people in his life, elicits an interesting response.
“Out of all the people who have tried to be your counsel over the years,” I ask, “whose advice did you take the most? Who do you lean on?”
“I can honestly say this,” he answers, taking his time. “I got more advice from this one guy than I’ve gotten from anybody.”
There’s a dramatic pause.
“And that’s Tupac Shakur,” he says.
I ask him later to clarify this.
“God and Tupac,” he reaffirms, naming his two greatest advisors. And his answers got deeper from there.
Dime: It’s obvious that you can be a very emotional player. Yet, the people who have known you longest say that you’re very unemotional.
Amare Stoudemire: I show emotion. You catch me on the court and I do a fancy dunk? You gonna see a lot of emotion out of me. But, uh…yeah…I haven’t cried in a while, man. I haven’t cried since my pops passed away.
Dime: Why?
AS: I don’t know, man. I just felt I had to be strong for the family. And now that I don’t have to be as strong it’s still…just by me not crying, it’s making it harder for me to cry because I’ve been trying not to cry for so long.
Dime: Let’s talk about your past, your childhood. You went through a lot growing up and you were forced to pretty much raise yourself. What do you do now with those life experiences? How do you use them to benefit yourself and others?
AS: Well, I’m the kind of guy where I give a lot of advice to a lot of young guys that’s really struggling. That’s the way I look at it. I look at myself as a kind of like a role model off the court. If a kid’s struggling and he’s really trying to make it in school, I’m pretty positive that I could tell [him] a couple things that’s gonna motivate him and get him over that hump.
Dime: Do you think you were meant to go through what you did in order to help other people?
AS: No question about it, man. I think God planned that for me so I could be a guy that can teach other kids about how to make it from the worst situations. There’s a lot of kids in the hood growin’ up in poverty that’s finding it extremely hard to make it, man. And I think eventually somebody will have to do it, you know, be successful that’s from the hood, that’s from poverty, so they can teach more kids that’s from the hood and from poverty. It’s time for us to rise, man.
Dime: So that tattoo on your chest is a reality for you; you believe you were chosen to help do this.
AS: Oh, no question. I think people in poverty and guys in the hood, you know, we’re last. And that’s who my tattoo speaks for. It don’t just speak for me; it speaks for people that’s brought up in poverty. We’re last right now. And the last are gonna be first and the first are gonna be last. It’s in the Bible. Those are Jesus’ words, you know what I mean? So that’s how it is and that’s how it’s gonna happen.
Dime: What’s the origin of your faith?
AS: My family, man. On my father’s side they go to church every Sunday and my mom is an ordained minister, so on both sides of the family that’s where I get my knowledge of the Bible and my faith.
Dime: Do you look at yourself as a Tupac-like figure? Someone who has a larger purpose than a scoring average?
AS: Yeah, I think so, man … I think basketball is gonna be me because I want to master the game. But besides that I think the main thing is that I really want to teach the kids, man, the kids in the hood in poverty. Like I said before, we’re last right now and we’re soon gonna be first and I want to be the one to spark it up. That’s my plan.
What was Stoudemire’s plan coming into the 2001-02 NBA season? No high school rookie was supposed to rule the way Stoudemire did in his inaugural year; especially one chosen ninth overall, one who was nowhere near as heralded or as well known as those picked before him. At pick number nine, the Suns got the sleeper — the kid who would quickly become highlight fodder for late-night sports shows. The kid who was unaware that he was supposed to have been afraid, afraid of the men he would face in NBA arenas as opposed to the boys he’d dominated in Florida. But why should he have been afraid? After all, this was just one more new life to add to the string of lives he’d had growing up, an onslaught of change that had prepared him for the chaos of the NBA in a way no mentoring program ever could.
Dime: Do you think your success as a high schooler-turned-pro player helped restore the validity of those types of draft choices? Choosing high school players hasn’t panned out for most teams.
AS: I think I started it. You know, I was the first player ever to get Rookie of the Year out of high school. And that’s a huge achievement as far as, you know, you had a Kobe Bryant, the Garnetts, and the McGradys, and the Moses Malones, and all those guys that are Hall-of-Famers, soon to be Hall-of-Famers, never accomplished that. And to be the first one to do it, coming from the background that I come from, I think that’s a huge accomplishment.
Dime: Despite whatever else was going on in your life as a teenager, you seemed to have always had your eyes on the prize. You only played two years of high school ball but you still got yourself ready for the NBA. Were you strategic in what you did as a prep? For instance, there was some controversy about you playing in both the Nike and adidas summer leagues that year, but it seems like you did it for very specific reasons.
AS: Oh, no question about it, man. I was the first guy to ever get MVP of the Nike camp two years in a row, and I don’t think nobody even knows that. It seems like everybody [tries] to hide my facts because of my background. But it’s all good. And the big controversy [was] when I was playing for an adidas team, AAU wise, and then I went to a Nike [team]. But I played on an adidas team, went to all the adidas tournaments in the circuit, and I was the best player on the circuit. So I figure, OK, I want to have no doubts I’m the best player in the country so I went to the Nike camp. And I knocked out both circuits in one year and nobody ever did that. So they made a big deal out of it. [But] I didn’t look it as [potential] shoe deals because it didn’t really matter to me about a shoe deal at that time. I was just making sure I was the best player in the country.
Dime: You’ve always been praised for your raw talent and yet you have desired some form of structure for that talent. Are you content now with the guidance of the Bulls coaches and the more technical side of the game?
AS: I think now with Coach [Scott] Skiles and [Jim] Boylan and Johnny Bach and those guys, they’re really teaching me basketball skills and I got the ability to put the ball on the floor now. I can shoot the ball now. I got an array of moves. It’s gonna get scary.
Dime: Your teammates and coaches have said that you seem to be in a whole other world when you’re on the court. What type of refuge is the game for you?
AS: I’ve been saying my prayers, man, for five years every night. Every single night. And that’s what I pray about, every night. To be the best basketball player, to reach my full potential. I’m [going to] try to master the game. Basketball is my love, man. My first love.
Dime: Do you feel as if you were forced to make the decisions you’ve made, career-wise? I mean, how different would your life be now had you went on to school for a few years before going pro?
AS: If it was just me, man, and my situation, I probably would have went to college just to get my education and to learn more [of] the fundamentals of the game. But with my family situation I couldn’t just go to college and then when I finally go back home my family [is] out hustlin’. That’s not the life I wanted to live, so I had to make that change.
Dime: But it turned out for the better, right? Regardless of the fact that you’d come straight from high school you proved that you were more than ready for the League.
AS: In high school, man, I really trained myself on the court and I mentally trained myself off the court. And I had to because I was pretty much the man of my family at the age of 15. So I had to really step up to the plate. And that’s what I did.
Dime: If you could go back though, make it so you wouldn’t have had to step to the plate so early and given yourself more time…would you?
AS: Not at all. Not at all. I wouldn’t change nothing that happened in my life. I’m very proud of what happened in my life. I’m very proud of what my family went through. I think without that I wouldn’t be so successful right now.
Dime: Talk about Lake Wales. Talk about what your family went through and what made you so successful.
AS: Well, Lake Wales, Florida, it was a fun place but there wasn’t really too much to do. There’s not too many jobs there; there’s a lot trouble around you. I call it a trap, man. It’s similar to a trap. A lot of hoods are a trap. Cause you grow up there and you got drugs, you got guns, you know what I mean? And there’s no way out of it. If you got family members that never went to college, you know, never left that town, then you’re not gonna leave that town, you’re not gonna go to college unless you really have that goal. And that’s how it is in Lake Wales, man. You got a lot [of kids] that are very good on the court, on the football field, on the baseball diamond. You know what I mean? But it’s hard. It’s extremely hard.
Dime: I read somewhere that you took some kind of IQ test in high school and you tested extremely high. Yet, like a lot of prep stars, you struggled academically. Why didn’t your obvious intelligence transfer over to your schoolwork?
AS: I couldn’t focus. There was a lot of things going on outside of basketball that had to do with family that wouldn’t allow me to stay focused in school. If you grow up in a household where you got your mom and dad there … you got a car in the garage, nice house; then you’re gonna focus. But if your mom is there somewhat of the time and your dad [has] passed away and you gotta catch a ride to school and you gotta figure out how you gonna get back from school, you gotta figure out how you gonna get school clothes, school shoes … how you gonna get a haircut; All that is in your mind [and at] the same time you gotta do schoolwork. That makes it even worse, that makes it harder, man. That’s why kids in the hood can’t make it out the hood because they gotta worry about all that and schoolwork. And in order for you to have that mindset, the only way I had that mindset, is because I surrounded myself [with] older guys. I hung out with the coaches.
Dime: It seems as if you mapped a way for you to get out of the hood early on.
AS: Yeah, man, I looked at it like this: my family was trapped. [There] was no way out pretty much. My mom has a criminal record so it’s hard for her to get a job. She can’t get a job: she can’t support the four kids. My pops passed away. I got a half-brother with a different dad and his dad passed away. So it’s like everything’s on my mom’s shoulders. So I [thought] there’s gotta be a way out. There’s gotta be a way that we can change all this. And that’s what made me stay so focused. That’s what made me stay with a positive attitude in the worst situations.
Dime: When you were traded to the Bulls, did you feel angry that the Suns gave up on you?
AS: No. I learned that nothing in life is constant and you have to be ready for anything. Chicago has a great tradition with MJ and everything. Now they got LeBron and Dwyane so I felt like I was gonna learn more and elevate my game even higher.
Dime: After that spectacular regular season last year and a dominating playoffs, you lost in five games to the Spurs in the NBA Finals. How did that ending affect you?
AS: Nothing in life is a given, man. We lost and it just drives you to work your game more. I'm looking forward to playing the Spurs again because I've been working a lot this offseason. And people are gonna see the Bulls rebirthed. And I'm gonna lead the way.
by colickyboy on Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:51 pm 
I think you're going to have a good year with a loaded roster like that. Let's see how Dream Team ver.2 does!
