Amar’e Stoudemire has been keeping busy in retirement. In addition to becoming an avid art collector and world traveler, the former All-NBA big man has signed on to spend part of his summer playing in Ice Cube’s Big 3 league.

SB Nation had the opportunity to talk to Stoudemire in a career-spanning interview ahead of the Big 3’s stop in Chicago last week. We discussed his jump from high school to the NBA, ushering in the league’s modern era with the Phoenix Suns, the high stakes free agency summer of 2010 and his favorite Boris Diaw stories.

I want to start from the beginning with your decision to enter the pros out of high school. You had committed to John Calipari at Memphis but ultimately decided to enter the draft. This is a hot button issue again because the NBA is thinking about abolishing the age minimum. What do you remember from that time in your life?

That experience was breathtaking, being a high school player who was thinking about the NBA as a major jump. I felt like my body was ready. I factored in every single detail that I could just to make sure I made the right decision.

When I decided to commit to Memphis, coach Calipari’s background, how well he does with one-and-done players, I wanted to be a part of that one-and-done opportunity. At the same time I felt like I was ready for the NBA. Physically, mentally, I was geared up for taking on those responsibilities as an NBA player.

I think they just have to be a little more strategic on how to evaluate the talent from high school to the NBA. You have to figure out ways to somewhat dissect the player to see if they’re mentally prepared for the NBA. To see if they are prepared to take on the financial awareness to handle that level of income. There’s a lot that needs to take place. There should be an infrastructure put in place strictly for high school players to learn and prepare for the NBA. There’s some great ones that came out of high school, and there’s a lot that we don’t hear about that wasn’t successful.

So, if you want to try to shorten that gap, I think the NBA should create a system that will cater to those high school players to get them to see if they’re ready for the league.

For me, when I got the call to play in the Olympics, and to represent USA, I’m like, I’m all the way in. For sure. The chance to get USA on my jersey, get a chance to represent in front of the world, I was locked in.

Once we got going, it was an eye-opening experience for me. I was maybe 22 years old at the time. Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan are here, I’m like these guys are the guys I grew up watching. I want to watch how they practice and watch how they work out. It was a learning curve for me. Even though guys like myself, LeBron, Dwyane, and Carmelo didn’t play a lot, we were still able to learn from those guys.

I’m still close friends with all those guys. We may not be the best of friends, like a call every single day, but we’re still pretty tight with each other. Every time we see each other we have so much love for one another. You do build that friendship on those type of trips.

 My rookie year, we had a completely different team. We had Penny Hardaway, Stephon Marbury, Tom Gugliotta. The next year we brought in Leandro Barbosa, we got Shawn Marion also. The year before we brought Steve in, we traded or released like six guys. So we only had seven, eight players who were playing the rest of the year. Our record was like 29 wins, but we had young talent.

We had a young Amar’e Stoudemire, a young Shawn Marion, a young Joe Johnson. We had a nice nucleus of young players, but we needed one more piece of the puzzle. Once we brought in Steve, it was just pkew. He elevated all of our games.

It’s very true. At the time, I had a little rebuttal. I didn’t want to play [center]. I felt like I was a natural [power forward]. I had skills that could associate me as somewhat of a [small forward]. I felt like I was digressing if I went to the [center spot]. It makes me too robotic, is what I was thinking.

Obviously the coaches know more about the game than the players. They study a lot more than we do. So I was like, no problem I’ll move to [center].

When I moved to [center], I realized, wow, I can still use my entire skill set against guys that are too slow to keep up. Then Shawn Marion moved to [power forward]. It was like, these two guys are transcending these two positions right now, and the league does not know what’s going on. We were winning by 20 points, 30 points, just tearing them up game after game after game, because no one really knew what was happening. Now, the entire league has caught on.

It got to the point where we became basketball players. It wasn’t about position no more. And that’s what we started to do that transcended the game. When someone asked me, ‘What’s your position?’ I said I’m a basketball player. Same with Shawn. It’s like, ‘Hey Shawn, what position do you play? I’m a basketball player.’

We can do it all. I’m not a point guard. I can’t pass the way Steve Nash does. But I can make certain plays on the court that can still elevate our team. I’m not just a one dimensional player. That’s how we thought as a team, that all of us had to be interchangeable and able to play multiple positions. That’s how we propelled that era of basketball.