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Kirk Hinrich

No, it’s not my team. This is Coach Skiles’ team. It’s our team. Not my team. It’s John Paxson’s team.

We’re together in this.

We’ve got a bunch of young guys,and a lot of nights we’ve had a lot more energy than other teams. I think that’s a lot of the reason for our success.

Last year I got sick and lost 13, 14 pounds. I feel much better physically and mentally and just a lot more comfortable.

Rookie year, you’re not sure of anything. You’ve never been through an 82-game season. You don’t know any of the players in the league as far as what their games are like. You don’t even know what it takes on a consistent basis to play 82 games and win your fair share of them.

I was shocked at how bad we were.

There were expectations — high expectations coming into the year — and I was just shocked at how bad we were.

And how many good players there are in this league.

As far as basketball, I had two coaches: my mom and my dad. I don’t know which one was harder on me.

When I was growing up, she’d be out in the backyard passing me the ball or something. That’s just how she was. Giving me instructions and stuff.

I always wanted to be a good player, and I think having my dad as coach helped push me to be better and fundamentally sound at a young age.

He was definitely harder on me than anybody else. You had to earn everything, because I’d find that people would assume that stuff was given to the coach’s son or whatever, and I tried to make sure that I was the best player so nobody could say anything.

My dad’s team hadn’t won a game, and the night I was born was the first win of the season, and I guess they went on a big winning streak after that. The headline in the paper was like, “Hinrich gets first son and first win,” or something like that.

When I won the state championship in high school, to be able to do that with my dad and my best friends in the world meant a lot.

I think my hero would be my dad. I just respect him so much for how much he went without to provide for our family.

Free throws. We missed, like, 20-something free throws in the game and lose by three1. Syracuse hitting all the threes. They just couldn’t miss.

I still think about it a lot. I hate to say it, but I do.

The NCAA tournament, I don’t even watch it.

It just doesn’t seem right, man. Because we had a couple shots at it and I felt we deserved to win.

The spotlight is not something I’m really comfortable being in.

I was shocked because every article there was something about my hair — the “shaggy hairstyle” or “with his country hairstyle.”

I usually grow it out really long in the summer. But I decided to cut it. I might grow it back out this summer.

I love Chicago fans. They’ve been good to me and good to the team. Every once in a while, they’ll come out booing, but normally it’s because we deserve it, I think.

Best piece of advice I ever got is my dad used to always say, “Positive attitude, positive results; bad attitude, bad results.” Whenever I start complaining to myself about something, I just think about that and try to have a good attitude.

I don’t know what my reputation is. It’s probably still to be determined.

I just want respect. I just want respect for the way I play.

1 – In the 2003 NCAA national championship game against Syracuse.