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Swat Lake City by Rudy Gobert

The article is pure gold. This quote is diamond-studded platinum.

The first time I met Karl was during a practice my rookie year. He was the nicest guy, very supportive. He told me he was excited to see what I could bring to the Jazz. We talked about big-man stuff and he offered to put me through some drills. His toughness in those drills was an eye-opening thing for me to see. When I think about it, I just remember his forearm. I was guarding him down low and he put a forearm on me. It was a rock. This might be the strongest man I’ve ever seen in my life. 50-year old Karl Malone. The strength he must’ve played with in his prime — I can’t imagine it. He made me want to be a better defender.
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And to think that last year we all paid good, hard-earned money for a billboard campaign this time last year.

And Mr. Right was there this whole time.
 
Magic Spray said:
And to think that last year we all paid good, hard-earned money for a billboard campaign this time last year.

And Mr. Right was there this whole time.
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Yeah but that’s why we wanted him to stay to be a second fiddle to our guy... I mean he would have been a fourth (Rick Curry) fiddle now but whatevs... we talking about George Hill right?
 
bigmike said:
"Be happy with what you have, but go out and take what's yours."

Yessir!
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That **** should be on a motivational poster somewhere.
 
Rudy and Don are going to lead this team to greatness for years to come! Our future hasn't been so bright in a long long time.
 
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Fantastic article. So many great quotes. I loved the Quin Snyder section in particular:

Thirty-eight. That’s another number I want you to remember.

My second year in the league, we won 38 games. I played in all 82 games that year and got a lot more minutes. My numbers improved to eight points and 10 rebounds a game. And most important (!) I wasn’t sitting on the floor next to the bench anymore.

We were moving in the right direction, and I think there was one main reason why: We got Quin. It was Coach Snyder’s first year as our coach.

Quin really surprised me the first time we met. It was in training camp in September 2014. I had just spent the summer playing in the World Cup for the French national team. To be honest, I didn’t think Coach knew who I was. One of the first conversations we had, he came up to me and told me he had watched every game France played in the World Cup.

It wasn’t b.s. — he was bringing up specific plays from specific games. He remembered how we lost to Spain in the group stage — by 24 points — and he remembered how we faced them again in the quarterfinals and won. We surprised a lot of people. Spain had the Gasol brothers, Serge Ibaka, Ricky Rubio, a great team. It was considered one of the best European teams. France was kind of forgotten about that year.

I remember what Coach said. He told me that he wanted me to play every single game the way I had played against Spain — that as long as he was my coach, he was going to push me to my limit. I didn’t know him very well but I could tell that he was serious. He was serious about coaching and serious about building a team in Utah that people wouldn’t be able to overlook. Serious about bringing back the excitement and respect that John Stockton and Karl Malone first brought here. “If you play like you did this summer, our team is capable of doing anything,” he told me.

He asked me if I was willing to do that. I nodded.

Inside, I was on fire.

My goal up to that point in the NBA was just to get a chance to compete. Nobody knew my name my rookie year. I believed that if I could get that chance, people would see. I needed someone to give me that chance.

Shout out, Coach.
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