He is also a published poet, freelance writer, activist, and motivational speaker, as well as a co-host of Centers of Attention, a sports talk show on ESPN Radio Syracuse in Syracuse, New York, alongside former professional basketball player Danny Schayes.

He also played basketball at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, OK, where he was a teammate of De'mond Parker, R. W. McQuarters and Ryan Humphrey.

During the Wizards' training camp for the 2007–08 NBA season, a routine physical examination discovered that he had a leaking aortic valve.

[5] On June 23, 2009, he was traded along with Oleksiy Pecherov, Darius Songaila, and a first-round draft pick to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Randy Foye and Mike Miller.

He would sit out for the remainder of the playoffs and the Atlanta Hawks were eventually eliminated in the Semi-Finals in 6 games by the Chicago Bulls.

[14] His mother spoke with him about activists who used their positions as athletes to amplify their reach, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, and Jim Brown.

[14] He points out the hypocrisy in an organization who makes billions a year and claims that there is not enough funding available for their main sources of profit, the athletes.

On August 16, 2008, he appeared with Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean at stops in northern Virginia as part of the Democratic National Committee's "Register for Change" bus tour to encourage local voter registration drives.