"I never really looked at myself as a scorer, but if the shot is there, I'm certainly going to take it"
About this Quote
Reggie Lewis is doing something athletes rarely get credit for: rejecting a label without denying the job. “I never really looked at myself as a scorer” isn’t false modesty so much as a declaration of identity. In the NBA, “scorer” is both compliment and trap - it implies hunger, ego, a kind of one-note stardom. Lewis frames himself instead as a player whose first loyalty is to the flow of the game, not the box score. That’s a subtle pushback against the way fans and media flatten careers into tidy archetypes.
Then comes the pivot: “but if the shot is there, I’m certainly going to take it.” The sentence carries a quiet steeliness. He isn’t apologizing for shooting; he’s normalizing it as a read, not a craving. The subtext is teamwork-as-discipline: good offense is opportunism with restraint. He’s telling you he’s not hunting points, he’s punishing mistakes.
Context matters. Lewis was the Celtics’ emerging centerpiece in the early 1990s, a franchise still living under the long shadow of Bird-era mythology. In Boston, you weren’t just asked to score; you were asked to embody “the right way” - unselfish, tough, system-minded. This quote sounds like an athlete navigating that cultural script while still claiming his authority. It’s leadership without chest-thumping: the promise that he’ll make the correct play, and that sometimes the correct play is simply to shoot and live with it.
Then comes the pivot: “but if the shot is there, I’m certainly going to take it.” The sentence carries a quiet steeliness. He isn’t apologizing for shooting; he’s normalizing it as a read, not a craving. The subtext is teamwork-as-discipline: good offense is opportunism with restraint. He’s telling you he’s not hunting points, he’s punishing mistakes.
Context matters. Lewis was the Celtics’ emerging centerpiece in the early 1990s, a franchise still living under the long shadow of Bird-era mythology. In Boston, you weren’t just asked to score; you were asked to embody “the right way” - unselfish, tough, system-minded. This quote sounds like an athlete navigating that cultural script while still claiming his authority. It’s leadership without chest-thumping: the promise that he’ll make the correct play, and that sometimes the correct play is simply to shoot and live with it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
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