It’s awesome. I’ve heard multiple times from different people over the years how Scott Skiles tried to get me in Chicago. That gives me a little bit of a comfort knowing that the coach wanted me here, he’s going to work with me. I’m far from a perfect player. I made some solid gains in my game last season and it’s only from hard work and I’ve got to work just as hard to try and make the same gains this year. Sometimes to get out of that comfort zone or bubble that you’ve been in. To go to a new place and get a new outlook or get somebody that’s pushing you again.

I think right now it’s an area in which I need to improve. I think the last few years people have criticized my defense a little bit. I’m still a person that believes in it. I understand that every good team I’ve ever been on we’ve had good defense. It’s an area, because of my role expanding the amounts of minutes I’ve been playing and the amount of scoring I’ve been asked to do, it has gone down.

It takes a little bit of a hit to your ego when people are talking about ‘you’re not as good defensively’ because that’s something I take pride in. It’s something I look forward to improving on and also having an impact. That’s probably going to be my focus now with a guy like Michael Redd and the balance across the board I don’t think there’s as much a need for me to ‘hey, we need you to score 25 points tonight.’ If you can go and stop their best player and give us 18, 19, 20, that’s where I’d like to be.