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It's All About H-Town by Clint Capela

Via The Players' Tribune - Growing up in Switzerland, there was this show my brothers and I watched every Sunday. Really great show, a lot of action and cool stunts. 

You may have heard of it. For us, it was always dubbed over in French, but in English I think it was called Texas Walker, Ranger?… pardon… Walker, Texas Ranger.

Ah yeah, that’s it Walker, Texas Ranger. That show was my jaaaaam.

It was basically this guy Chuck Norris, who played a cop. A Texas cop. He had tight jeans and a cool beard, and sometimes a cowboy hat, not always. The way it went was that if you fought Chuck Norris, you got your butt kicked for sure. And his partner Jimmy, his sideckick, was real cool too. Also kicking butts.

So anyway, until pretty much the night I was drafted by the Rockets in 2014, if you asked me what I knew about Texas, I could tell you about Walker, Texas Ranger then fini [nothing else].

Texas had always seemed like this imaginary place I’d seen on TV, but I never expected to live there. Yes, I expected to play professionally in America. But this wasn’t America. I was going to Texas.

For so long I had only played for Chalon, in France. When I first joined their academy, I viewed myself more as a football player — not like Houston Texans J.J. Watt, I mean soccer. That was the sport I spent most of my time playing growing up. I was a striker, always attacking the net — a lot of headers, obviously. And my biggest sports hero was Thierry Henry. He still is, actually. I never missed a French national team game growing up. It wasn’t just his great skill, it was also his style. Henry had this different kind of swag, man. He’s what in America they call greatest of all-time. Le GOAT.

I was used to this entirely different culture and lifestyle overseas. Of course, getting drafted to play in the NBA was a dream come true, but it wasn’t until I heard my name and “Houston Rockets” together for the first time that the reality of everything hit me.

I was moving to a new place where I barely knew the language and where I understood none of the customs...

Read the full article HERE.