(CRAFT)[FOOTWORK IS ABOUT EFFICIENCY.]

I needed to be able to get to my attack spots in one or two dribbles. I also needed to be able to shoot from range. In doing so, I limited the amount of time I gave the defense to react, conserved my energy, and forced them to pick me up a great distance from the basket. The key was knowing how to move the defense with just my feet and my eyes and the positioning of my body, by knowing how to manipulate them left or right without having to put the ball on the floor.

During my early years in the NBA, I was surprised to learn that I took a different, more fundamental and serious, approach to footwork than a lot of players. A lot of players solely focused on improving off the dribble, but I also always placed added emphasis on playing off the catch. I learned that approach when I was young, in Europe. There, our practices included scrimmages where we weren’t allowed to dribble. So later, when I moved to the States, I had all of the footwork down from those days. Only after mastering pivots—reverse pivots, inside reverse pivots, outside reverse pivots —did I work on the sexier between-the-legs, behind-the-backs, and crossovers.

Later in my career, players asked me to share the how-tos of some of my footwork with them. LeBron, Durant, Westbrook—they really wanted to know the intricacies of it. The timing of their enthusiasm was perfect for me: I was on the last stretch of my career, and we weren’t competing for championships, so I was happy to share what I knew.