“Yeah, he was great. I tell you what, he was hard. …

Fred VanVleet on Masai Ujiri: “Yeah, he was great. I tell you what, he was hard. Like, he was serious as f***, you know what I’m saying? It wasn’t no bulls*** with him. But he never lied, and he always told me the truth, and he always challenged me. And I think it was coming off my second year, I was hurt in the playoffs, and I think he was looking at me like he thought I was trying to sit out so I could get paid. But I really was hurt, though. So he pulled me to the side. He like, ‘Look, I’m going to tell you some real s***. It’s never been one of us that I ain’t paid. You know what I’m saying? It ain’t my money. I’m going to pay you what you deserve, but I need you to do what you need to do.’ Like, all right. He was like, ‘The only guy I never paid, I traded him to the team he wanted to go to.’ And I never forgot that. So it put me at ease, you know what I’m saying? And then he always would challenge me to be better than what I was, because you’ll get comfortable. You’ll get like, ‘I’m cool.’ He like, ‘No, you could do this, this, this. I’m not going to pay you unless you do this. I’m not going to pay you unless you do that.’ And at the time, like, ‘This m***********, man, it was some bulls***.’ Fred VanVleet: "But I ain’t know he was really just trying to push me. And then the older I got, I’m like, ‘Okay, I could appreciate that,’ because everybody not going to do that. Most GMs will sit there and watch you do some s*** and wait till it’s time to pay you, and then they got a whole list of s*** that you ain’t been doing. You know what I’m saying? With that list, he’ll help you. He’ll tell you like, ‘No, this is what you need to do.’ So I always had just a lot of respect for him, because he was cut though. There’s no bulls*** with him.”

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This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: “Yeah, he was great. I tell you what, he was hard. …