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"FacebookPinterest\n\nWhen the 2011-12 NBA season expired, so did the lease at Andre Iguodala's apartment in Philadelphia, where he'd played his entire career. But instead of finding a new place right away, Iguodala moved his belongings into a storage facility and took off for London, where he was a member of the gold-winning 2012 U.S. Men's Basketball team. While in London, Iguodala was traded to the Denver Nuggets as a part of the Dwight Howard/Andrew Bynum trade. \"So at least for me, moving was easy,\" the 29-year-old fashion-forward forward laughs. \"I just picked up the stuff at the storage unit and shipped it out.\"\n\nAs Denver's designated defender, Iguodala has fit well into the ferocious scheme employed by George Karl, zooming up and down the floor and leaving opponents breathless. And even though nobody called it at the time, thanks to Iguodala, the Nuggets have ended up as the surprise winners in the Howard/Bynum sweepstakes. Catch them if you can.\n\nYou guys had a ridiculous schedule to start the season with a ton of road games, but you went 20-7 in January and February and are currently a five-seed in the West. Does having all these home games left now work to your advantage, when you can play at altitude against teams that are worn down?\n\nIt seems as if it's helped us. I was telling the guys, I'm not really worried about November, December. We can just kind of weather the storm, just kind of get through the first two months, and we'll be fine come January and February, and it seems like it's played out to work for us.\n\nDo you have to be in better shape to play in Denver than you did to play in Philly because of the altitude?\n\nOnce you get through training camp, you're going to be in better shape. Once you get through it, you're good. You just kind of have to push yourself a little harder, and try and tire yourself out for the first two weeks. It just feels like you can't get air in your lungs. So you're just like [wheezes]. You're looking for air, and it's nowhere to be found. You're searching for your second wind the first minute or two of the game, and you're like, Man, I'm out of it already.\n\nYou were drafted as a 20-year-old and have been in the NBA for a decade now. What is it like for a person to grow up in the NBA?\n\nIt can be a gift and it can be a curse. It's really up to you to try to be as responsible as possible with your surroundings. You've got to find the right guys, because you can really go down either road. You hang with the wrong crowd, you get stuck in that situation, where it seems like there's always something bad happening and you don't know why, so you're like, \"Why me? Why me?\" Or you can try and surround yourself with the good veterans, the good pros, and that's what I tried to do. I think they helped me out tremendously, as far as hanging around with guys like Kevin Ollie and Aaron McKie and Corliss Williamson. Those guys kind of raised me and taught me how to be a pro. They smoothed everything out.\n\nAnd do you try to pay that forward now?\n\nYeah, you try to do it now, but it's kind of hard because the League's getting younger and younger, and guys are looking for stardom right away, and they don't understand the process. There's only a select few that come in and have that impact right away. Everyone expects it to be them, but everybody has their own process. You have to go through bumps and bruises, and if it does take you longer, you have to learn how to live in the League. Be a professional, be a pro, because those young guys who are playing really well and contributing and putting up big numbers, they're basically being groomed and have somebody on them 24/7 and helping them as much as possible along the way. Then you've got other guys who aren't playing, you're just throwing them in the fire and you're pretty much on your own, and at any time you can be out of the League. So you just have to learn how to do things and how to go through that.\n\nDoes it help your personal life if your basketball life is more defined?\n\nIf you know exactly what's going on with work, it kind of sets up everything else outside of it. You just feel like if you're in the right state of mind at work, and everything else follows suit. If you have a bad game, it just seems like you had a bad day, you're going to complain to your wife, you're going to complain to your girlfriend. And if you had a good day, everything's good. So that's kind of the hard part of the game: If you really love the game, how you play can really affect your day. It sets the tone for everything.\n\nI always remember you telling me really early on how great you thought Jrue Holiday was going to become, and now he's an All-Star. I know they play different positions, but what have you seen from Kenneth Faried in Denver?\n\nThey're different types of players. I think with Jrue, I saw skill in his game. Like, he didn't have any weaknesses that you could really exploit, and he was a great defender and he was strong. He had an upside that was just incredible. With Kenneth, he's one of those guys that's just a workhorse, and that's how he's going to make a living. His athletic ability mid with his work ethic sets him apart from a lot of guys who have one or the other, but not both.\n\nWhich leads me ask, what's up with JaVale McGee?\n\nJaVale McGee is one of the smartest guys I know. Like, he's a nerd, plays with gadgets and is into technology. He's funny--he's got crazy jokes and his timing with jokes is really funny. You have to be really smart to think the way he does. He's a thinker, so his mind goes into a lot of different places, and I think that can be taken the wrong way when he's on the court--he can be an over-thinker at times.\n\nI saw you tweeting a while back about looking for a \"chill\" spot to hang out there in Denver, and then finally finding a place. So you were looking for a spot to kind of get away?\n\nYeah. And I found this spot open all the time, and I just go there and chill. I like the ambiance. I'm by myself in Denver sometimes, and there are times when I don't want to be alone, so I'll go to my spot and hang out for two, three hours, and watch SportsCenter and text people and just relax.\n\nAnd you don't care about going out to clubs or whatever?\n\nI think it's just once you've seen one you've seen it all. With the exception of maybe Vegas or Miami once or twice, other than that it's all the same to me. I can't hear anything in the club with the loud music, so you're in there and you're like, \"I CAN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE OF THE LOUD MUSIC.\" I hate that, yelling back and forth. And I don't drink, so it's kind of pointless.\n\nSomeone was telling me the other day that Dwyane Wade was one of the first fashion-forward guys of your generation, but I think you were, too.\n\nYou had a lot of guys who cared about how they presented themselves. But that was the beginning of his stardom, so everybody was paying attention. I've always tried to look the part. I always wanted to present myself well, and express my style with my clothes, as well as who I was as a basketball player. Since the dress code, guys have to dress the same way, but we express ourselves differently within that. That's one thing that's my definition of fashion, is that I want to express myself through clothes. It doesn't have to be trendy or like anybody else, it's just how you want people to see you.\n\nDo you go shopping on the road?\n\nI don't really shop too much. I shop a few times a year. The way it is set up now, I pretty much get everything made because my body type is so weird. So I have to get things made six months in advance. I get my suits made, then go through the process of getting fitted, and that takes a whole day. And once you're fitted, they have your measurements forever, because your body type doesn't change too much. After that, if I see something I like I call the order in, and it may take a while to get to me, but it fits me perfectly and I don't have to worry about anything.\n\nBut you have to think six months ahead?\n\nRight. So coming soon I'll be shopping for fall. It's not that hard, actually. It's like, What don't I have? First of all I tried to build a base of things that I needed, and then you start filling in around that. It took me like a year or two to get everything I needed, and now I might buy one or two pieces that might not look as good in ten years because they're kind of trendy, but other than that I have my base, which is stuff that is pretty timeless.\n\nLang Whitaker is GQ's NBA blogger as well as the editor-at-large at SLAM Magazine and a regular contributor to NBA TV. Follow him on Twitter @langwhitaker."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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