Gary Payton is an absolute NBA legend and one of the consensus best point guards of all time. The Glove played for 17 years, including being synonymous with the Seattle Supersonics for 13 seasons. The nine-time All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist did pretty much everything during his time in the league (including finally capturing an NBA championship in 2006 with the Heat), and now he’s transitioning into an ambassador role, including working on bringing the NBA back to Seattle.
We caught up with Payton during an appearance at the Mitchell and Ness pop-up store on Fairfax Ave. in Los Angeles during All-Star Weekend. Following a Q and A where Payton shared memories of past NBA peers and fielded questions from a small group of adoring fans, he took the time to answer some of our questions before the space hosted a raucous after-party featuring an appearance by Nas and others.
UPROXX: How many All-Star Weekends is this for you now?
Gary Payton: Man, I don’t know … I went to 10 of them. Now, it’s probably about my 30th. 30, 30, yeah. I was going to them for a long time, I’ve been out of the NBA for 11 years now, and I’ve probably been to eight since I’ve been out. So yeah, it’s about 30, 30.
What is your favorite part of All-Star Weekend?
Well, when I was playing, it was about being in the locker room with the guys. You know, them were the guys that you always competing against, you wanted always to get with them and get to know them a little bit better, because we weren’t as friendly … as these guys are now. So this was a time for them to meet our families, everybody else meet their families, but nowadays it’s about work, because I work for the NBA.
I try to do the corporate stuff now, and stay in with the CEOs, and stuff like that. Try to get another avenue of what’s going on behind the scenes in the NBA. I really don’t be going to the dunk contests anymore, I go to the games, so that I can go to the CEO and go up into the suites and meet these guys. Other than that, that’s what it’s about now.
Do you see yourself as continuing along that executive track?
I do, I mean I like doing the things that I do with the NBA. They did make me an ambassador overseas, I’d go and do a lot of overseas work with them with NBA Cares. We get to meet with a lot of kids that I like doing, that’s what I like doing. Doing clinics and stuff like that, going over and meeting them kids, because these kids didn’t get to meet us. They didn’t get to meet the legends, so when they come over there, they’re very awe. So I bring out two to three hundred people with something like this in China, so this was really big for me to do that. So I like doing that.
I just came from interviewing the Inside the NBA guys. Kenny Smith thinks that there’s going to be an NBA team in Europe before there is one in Seattle. What’s your take?
I disagree, too. I don’t think Adam Silver will let [there be a team in Europe] yet. That’s going to be a lot of traveling, you got to have a lot of teams that you don’t know how you are going to work the schedule. Seattle will be a better schedule work, it’ll be a better thing for them, because they can have 32 teams, they had a team on the east and west, it’ll make it easier that way. Once we put up this arena, I think that it’ll go, then you got to worry about Europe. Because you going to have to keep somebody over there for minute, you know what I am saying? You can’t bring them back and then try to play in another day or two. So it is not going to happen, because they’re going to have jet lag.
B-Ball’s Best Kept Secret. Are you going to do a volume two, or what?
Man, they’d been asking us about doing the rap stuff, man, but a lot of us were talking about we didn’t want to do it. You know what I am saying? It ain’t in our future to do [another one]. It was something we did in ’93 that was really good, and we had it. It was good, but I don’t think so.
