Gasol: The Doctor (ESPN Article)

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He focused on his studies, but as the years passed, he grew to 6-feet-nothing and then 6-foot-something. The sport of basketball had always been in the equation, but now that he was pushing 7 feet, now that he towered over most everyone in Barcelona, he would have a decision to make soon.

He tried balancing both basketball and medicine at first -- and, the truth is, he wasn't the better for it. By day, he was an 18-year-old, first-year med student at the University of Barcelona; by night, he was a pivot man on the FC Barcelona club team. It might've worked if he had owned a car, but he was forced to take public transportation from school to basketball practice -- either that or hail a ride from his parents -- and that took a major toll on him.

"Taking a bus is always tough because you always have to be ducking," the 7-footer says. "But it also made me grow up in many ways because I didn't have any personal life at that time -- I was only committed to basketball and medicine. Most of my friends were hanging, and my basketball teammates were playing basketball and hanging out, and the guys at med school -- they were studying. I was doing both."

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