RealGM

You own a hotel in Turks and Caicos. You also wrote a book called “Stamina,” which is pretty self-explanatory given your journey from where you began to today. What’s your day-to-day like now?

DA: “Basically, I still do my hotels, but now I do movies. I wrote one book, I do motivational speaking and I write movie scripts. I sit at home, work and network and connect with other people and their business.”

What inspired you to do all that?

DA: “What inspired me to write the book was I met my mother for the first time in 24 years. When I met her, it inspired me to write a book about forgiveness, about me being abandoned. She left me in an empty apartment at 10 years old. I had to find my own way for years. She never came to games, never supported me. Or my father.

“So I went to find both my parents. I met them, and I was like, ‘People need to forgive people. If I can live my life and make it through all the stuff I’ve been through, having a child at 14, being a single dad at 15 and still make it, you can make it too.’ I was just inspired to do that.”

Do you follow the Clippers?

DA: “Always. Even when I came back, I’ve always loved the Clippers, because the people were good.”

Is it kind of crazy to think how far they’ve come since your playing days there?

DA: “Yeah, we practiced at Carson Community Center and got kicked out of practice one day. It’s a totally different thing.”

Clippers.com

Anderson was at the Pelican a few days ago.

Derek was a versatile player, could play at 1-2-3 positions. i didn't know about his history but I appreciated his 1 season with us in that deep dark days of pete chilcut and keith closs. I think that was Olowakandi's second season with us and Lamar was our #1 option that year.

does anybody else remember the name Chris Ford? lol he was a terrible coach for us at the time.

anywho, good for Derek. anyone who can make it in life after being abandoned at 10 and a dad at 14 is a champ in my book.

Props to D.A. for being able make a lot of things in his life worth while. I didn't have a great childhood myself, so I can certainly sympathize with him, and not letting his troubles define him as a person. Jimmy Butler of the Bulls pretty much had a similar life to Derek, and we see how successful he is now.

I'm kinda surprised, though, he would even follow the Clippers, because he seemed one of the bunch of guys who got out the first chance he got, and would want nothing to do with them (then again, given who was in charge of the franchise, who could blame him). However, seeing as that a lot of the old Clippers are gradually getting back involved in some way, it's a good thing.

Chris Ford was a Bill Fitch disciple, and he was pretty much a terrible head coach everywhere he went (here, Milwaukee, and Boston). One of the worst Clippers games I ever attended was in that season that Anderson played on the team ('99-00, the first season at Staples), and it seemed like everyone was going through the motions that night--lazy and uninspired play all night by both teams (the Clips played the Warriors that night).

Nice read, honestly I wish there was more