Championship Advice On Sports and Life

by Ryan Sherwin

"Omnipotent," "mesmerizing," never "lackadaisical," always "shakin' and bakin'" Walt Clyde Frazier is clearly not your average man by any set of standards. At fifty five years old, he is anything but average! His uniquely-styled, "electrifying" monologues over MSG network have drawn just as large a crowd as his "tantalizing" ball handling which won him a spot as one of the NBA's greatest players of all time. Even though he has achieved all of these accomplishments, he has not changed one bit. His amazing presence in the world of sports has enshrined him in the TeenSpeak Hall of Fame. This TeenSpeak reporter recently visited the Garden and spoke with this famous, charismatic ballhandling wizard.

The most important thing to Walt Clyde Frazier is being a positive role model. Winning two championships with the Knicks was amazingly exciting, but the real challenge for Frazier lay in developing the ability to articulate his viewpoints to the media. He wasn't satisfied with just talking like an average American. He wanted more. He wanted to be one of the smartest and most interesting men in the NBA. He believes that the more he could influence young kids to read, the better people they would become in life, and the more opportunities they would find open to them. "People would ask me stuff I couldn't answer. That's why I started diligently working to improve my vocabulary. I used to get The Sunday Times, Arts & Leisure section, and I liked the words in them so much, that I would study them."

While winning one, let alone two championships would be enough for any ballplayer, Walt had still another goal. "My only goal for playing was to buy my mom a house. So, I used to pray every night, 'let me be a basketball player' because my mother was always talking about a house with a big kitchen, because of all of the kids." He found out that the best way to achieve this goal was to be a great basketball player and an articulate one at that.

Being a solid citizen carries more clout with Frazier than being a fabulous athlete. He was always interested in what he could do for his community, rather than what his community could do for him. When asked about the change Frazier indicated, "It's been a tremendous change in that when I played, people were more concerned with your character than with your shot. You had to be a good citizen, a good person before they really admired you as an athlete. Today, of course, it's not true. They care more about your athletic ability. They don't really care what you do off the court as long as you perform on the court."

Walt Clyde Frazier