Motivation Quote by Julius Erving

Erving frames mentorship as a kind of backstage pass to professional sports: not the highlight-reel stuff, but the unglamorous operating system that keeps a career alive. The phrase "in the business" matters. He is not talking about role models as distant idols or moral mascots; he is talking about co-workers who understood the league as a workplace with rules, politics, money, and consequences. That choice of language quietly punctures the romantic mythology of the prodigy who simply arrives fully formed.

Naming Gray Scott, Adrian Smith, and Roland Taylor is also strategic. It resists the superstar-centric narrative that tends to swallow team sports whole. Erving, a figure often treated like a singular icon, makes his origin story communal. The specificity signals credibility: real people, real apprenticeship, real debt.

"Took me under their wing" and "schooled me" carry a double edge. It is affectionate, but it also admits vulnerability. Young talent is raw material; without guidance, it gets exploited, mismanaged, or burns out. In the 1970s-era pro basketball world Erving came up in, players were navigating shifting leagues, uneven labor power, and the early stages of modern sports celebrity. "What the business was about" hints at lessons that are rarely public: negotiating leverage, staying disciplined on the road, reading front offices, protecting your body, managing ego.

The subtext is a rebuttal to the lone-genius fantasy. Greatness, Erving implies, is trained - and the training includes learning how not to get played.