<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Chris Andersen was going to buy his mother a house. They would build it right in the middle of the 10 acres she had in rural God-knows-where Texas. He said he would buy her a Lamborghini, too. She laughed at that. If he just helped her pay for her meds, that would be enough. This is what they dreamed about. A life in which they didn't have to struggle. A life in which she wouldn't have to push a janitor's broom or tend bar, which one of her Harley buddies owned. Linda Holubec was there that November night in 2001, when the Denver Nuggets called her son with the news that they were signing him to a deal that would end his vagabond lifestyle. They were sitting in a hotel lobby in Fayetteville, N.C., about to board a van bound for some minor-league outpost. She would never have to lend him money for groceries or co-sign for another car again. They had made it. For almost his entire life they had been inseparable. She held him for hours and wiped his tears the day his father walked out on them. She sat beside him as he got his first tattoo on his 18th birthday. She scraped together tip money to travel to the far side of the world to watch him play basketball in gyms so smoky her glasses would fog up. Now they were bound for Denver, and she couldn't wait to hug Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe. They didn't know much about pro basketball, but they knew they'd be rich. And they had done it together. An improbable journey from the backwoods of Texas, where kids are more likely to get hooked on meth than play AAU ball, had reached its end point.</div> Read More Long, but nice read.
