Rocket fan from Sweden!

Hello, guys!

Feels good to be a member at the best Rocket forum on the net!

Didn't grow up watching the Rockets, in fact, I didn't even know about the Houston Rockets when I was a kid.

It all started when I was 8 and my older brother came home from a basketball tournament and he bought me a "Hakeem the Dream"-poster.
I had no clue what so ever who the man was, neither did my brother. I loved the poster though and I thought his name was really cool so I put it up in my bedroom. I looked at the poster for years without bothering to do some background check regarding who the guy was.

I started to play basketball for a team in Sweden when I was 10 and I loved it from the very first second I started to play. I played whenever I had the opportunity to do so and basketball was really my thing, especially due to my height and I wasn't bad at it either.

When I was 12 I googled Hakeem Olajuwon and I finally got a clue regarding who the guy was and I downloaded clips of him on Kazaa and he was the most amazing player I had seen. I still remember how amazed I was when I saw the massive block he had on Strickland for the first time;



The more I watched, the more I fell in love with him as a player and the Rockets as a franchise.


Everything from young Akeem killing Abdul-Jabbar in the playoffs, to him toying the Sonics, the back to backs. I was stuck, I even tried to put in the dreamshake to my arsenal. I was fortunate enough to play for the youth national team of Sweden and I remember doing the dreamshake in my 2nd game for our team and it was so bad ass, I got my defender jumping big time.

Years has passed but no other team has ever caught my attention and Olajuwon and the Rockets franchise have given me alot of joy and even changed some of the paths in my life.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to study abroad and I could choose between plenty of universities and a handful of them were in the US. I ended up at Texas A&M and to be honest I picked A&M alot due the fact that it was close to Houston and that I would be able to go and see the Rockets live.

The 29th of April I saw my first Rockets game live, it was in the playoffs and against OKC and the Rockets won. I loved every second of it.

Bottom line, something as random as a swedish kid getting a poster of a basketball player completely changed alot of decisions in my life more than a decade later and it made me a Rocket fan for life!

 

Thanks for all the kind replies!

Thought it would be a fun story to share. Whenever I think about the impact that random poster I had in my room had on me, I have a hard time not laughing.

By the way, I still have the poster and it's still in my room even though my girlfriend hates it, haha..

 

Yeah, but only oldskool stuff, I have one Olajuwon jersey and a couple of t-shirts. No one gets it in Sweden though so I never wear them, haha, only when I ball.

 

Haha, nice swedish!
Although the last sentence was kind of weird, you wrote, "I want to be in correct Sweden now".

Funny error, I know you were thinking about "right" but google translate or maybe your vocabulary played a trick on you. :grin:

 

Not really.

I mean, first of all, although there are swedish players in the NBA right their fanbase is pretty small. Especially Jeff's, people barely know who he is and Jerebko is known by the fans but it woul be a lie to say that he's loved by any means.

I have only played against Jerebko in division 2 in Sweden so I have no clue about how he is as a person, I only know that he was a freaking beast and impossible to guard.

Jeff on the other hand, I've played against him and with him. I was on the same junior national team as him years back and I promise you, a more humble and nice guy is very hard to find in the NBA. Zero cockiness what so ever, you would never that think he's some hot shot NBA player who earns millions if you met him on the street, he doesn't take alot of space and he's really nice as a person. Really proud and happy for him, his dad is just as nice as well.