Shane Battier: We were just very, very poor. I was the only kid in town who had a Black dad and a white mom. So, in an elementary school of 500 kids, I was the only Black kid. I got a pick on picture day—everyone else got a comb. On Martin Luther King Day, I was expected to know everything about Black culture from the dawn of civilization. And I was a foot taller than everybody else. So, I was the kid who always had to carry a birth certificate with him to the Little League game. I was an outcast wherever I went—mixed, tall, and poor. The only place I really felt at home was at recess: playing kickball, dodgeball, basketball, baseball—all the sports. And I realized that when I helped my friends win, I wasn’t the poor kid, the mixed kid, the tall kid. I was just the kid who helped my friends win. I didn’t care about what I did or how I looked. All I cared about was: did we win, and did I help my friends win? So, I was going to do whatever it took—whatever it took to make sure my friends looked good and that we won. I took that lesson from kindergarten. It was born out of desperation. It was born out of just—I want to be loved. I want to be accepted. That’s what put the dog in me—to just be intense and paranoid and all those things.” -via YouTube / June 8, 2025
