Robin Lopez

“Teammates sacrifice for each other.”

“What kind of a dinosaur am I? I guess something like a triceratops. A triceratops is not too dynamic, but has a little strength.”

“If I would remain in Chicago, I'd be happy doing what I can to help out. That's pretty much how my mindset has been playing anywhere.”

“Obviously I've loved my time here in Portland.”

“I'm trying to be the people's champion.”

“I'm not listening to 'Email My Heart.' I don't know anybody who is listening to 'Email My Heart.'”

“There have been times we recognize, 'I need to get better at this particular aspect of the game.'”

“I want to play as many games as I possibly can.”

“I'm a basketball player. I'm going to compete every night, play some good ball and get better.”

“When you are getting drafted you have an idealized situation, but you really don't know how things are going to go down.”

“Obviously in the NBA, winning is everything; every NBA player will tell you when you are in a winning situation that's what this league is about. That one year in Phoenix when we went to the Western Conference finals was amazing; Portland when we got to the second round was a great year.”

“I am so fortunate to have a mom who shared with me her love for books and helped me, from my earliest memories, take great adventures through reading.”

“All my teammates, whether they've been playing with me or sitting on the bench and not dressing, they've supported me. I don't think I'd be too good a person if I didn't do at least the bare minimum of the same.”

“Brook is my sounding board about everything - including being tall.”

“I'm a competitive person.”

“My mindset is to go out there to do anything I can to help out my teammates, be that garbage guy like that. I think I've been very crisp from that standpoint. I've played with some great guys and some great teams and some not so good teams, but I think I've drawn a lot from those experiences.”

“When you have somebody out there that's willing to work for the team first, that's contagious. In Phoenix, I learned that from Steve Nash, Grant Hill, so many different guys. When you're playing with somebody like Steve, like Grant, that just passes on to you.”

“When the whole team succeeds, everybody profits.”

“Although Perm is one of the biggest cities in Russia it felt like a different kind of Russia. In Moscow, you have the Kremlin, St. Basil's, a lot of Soviet iconography everywhere. In Perm, it was a different side of Russia. A little more folksy. If Moscow is an iron statue of an eagle, Perm is a matryoshka nesting doll.”

“You can go on about injuries in this league; those will happen.”