SALT LAKE CITY -- Making the impossible seem ordinary on defense is becoming a habit for Rudy Gobert. Its no secret that his defensive domination has played a big role for the Utah Jazz in building a four-game winning streak.Gobert has finished with double-doubles in three of his last four games, culminating in a 16-point, 14-rebound effort in Utahs 120-101 victory over Houston on Tuesday night. The 7-foot-1 center has averaged 15.3 points, 13.5 rebounds and 3.3 blocked shots during the Jazz winning streak.He is living up to his moniker The Stifle Tower by finding ways to block shots, alter others and force opponents out of their usual rhythm on offense. The scary thing for future Jazz opponents is that Gobert doesnt feel like hes even scratched the surface yet.Im just 24, Gobert said. I can get a lot better, but Im feeling good for sure.With Gobert at the top of his game defensively, Utah has turned the basket into a fortress where offenses cant even cross the moat to get inside. The Jazz have allowed 88.6 points per game through eight home games so far. In their last three home contests, theyve won by an average margin of 23.7 points.Utah coach Quin Snyder credits Gobert with an improved focus for allowing his game to open up on both ends of the court.Some of the things he is doing is he is just getting from play-to-play, Snyder said. You dont have those moments where he is distracted about something else thats happened on the court. As a result, his focus is so consistent when that happens.Miami has already seen firsthand what Gobert can do this season. He had 12 points and 12 rebounds to help lead Utah to a 102-91 victory over the Heat on Nov. 12. The Heat will likely need to counter him with a big game from their own big man, Hassan Whiteside.Whiteside stepped up to the plate big time in a 106-98 victory over Denver on Wednesday night. He finished with 25 points and 16 rebounds. It marked his third straight game that Whiteside finished with a double-double.Whiteside credited his teammates with making his job easier against the Nuggets through their own elevated defensive efforts.That was the best communication we had all season, especially on defense, Whiteside said. We had guys in the right spot, communicating with each other.The most remarkable part of these performances is Whiteside is getting this kind of production even while dealing with a sore left knee. An MRI on Monday came back negative. He isnt the only key player on either team thats been ailing.Both the Heat and the Jazz will be missing starters on Thursday night after injuries earlier this week.Rodney Hood suffered a right hamstring strain in the third quarter against Houston and did not return. He is listed as questionable. Derrick Favors has already been sidelined six games with a left knee bone contusion.Dion Waiters suffered a groin injury against Boston on Monday and will be out for at least two weeks. He joins Justise Winslow on the sideline. Winslow has only appeared in nine games because of a wrist injury. Cheap Vans Sk8 Hi Shoes . The news was first reported on Gonzalezs Twitter account and confirmed by the Rockies. Gonzalez has a six-week window before position players have their first workout at spring training in Arizona. Vans Sk8 Hi Reissue .C. Lions has come to an end. Banks told TSN on Jan 2 that he had no interest in playing out the option year of his contract with the Lions in 2014, and he again made that clear in a conversation with Lions GM Wally Buono last week. http://www.vansshoesclearancesale.com/vans-old-skool-sale.html . Fred Couples, captain of the U.S. side, put it all into perspective. "We know whos in charge," he said. Cheap Vans Shoes .com) - Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and Roger Federer were easy first-round winners Tuesday at the Australian Open. Vans Shoes Clearance . Vaives lawyer Trevor Whiffen claims the former 50-goal man wasnt provided with a copy of the claim beforehand and that he would not have agreed to the allegations made against the NHL had he been asked to review its contents. On Friday, Tom Izzo will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the defining moment of the Michigan State coachs career.No one necessarily sets out to get to the Hall of Fame. Instead one stepping stone leads to the next and the next, slowly building a career that winds its way to Springfield, Massachusetts. Izzo is no different. He was an ex-player who simply wanted to be a coach, and a coach who desperately wanted to win. All of that just so happened to add up to a Hall of Fame worthy career.But some steps were bigger and more important than others, starting points or turning points that, when strung together, led the Michigan State Spartans coach to the 2016 class.Here then are the moments that made Izzos defining moment possible:1. A news brief The news brief from The Mining Journal, the paper of record in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is just that -- brief. Posted on Nov. 6, 1977, it reads simply: Iron Mountain native Tom Izzo, captain of coach Glenn Browns last two Northern Michigan University basketball squads and the teams most valuable player for the 1976-77 season, will replace Mike Mileski as the Ishpeming Hematites varsity boys basketball coach.Its also the official notice of Izzos first coaching step. Hed spend one year with the Hematites before returning to his alma mater as an assistant for his old coach, Glenn Brown.2. A place in the dungeon In town to watch the high school state championships and recruit for Northern Michigan, Izzo instead tried to market himself. By then four years into his gig at Northern Michigan, he was looking to begin working his way up the recruiting ladder.The young assistant worked up his nerve to ask Jud Heathcote, then just two years removed from taking Michigan State to the Final Four, if he had an opening on his staff. Heathcote politely told him he did not. A year later, same drill. That time he had a broken jaw, Heathcote said. I could hardly understand him. Heathcote told Izzo he still had no openings.Finally on Izzos third visit to East Lansing, Heathcote offered him a spot in the dungeon room -- a $7,000 a year graduate assistant job.I figured with his perseverance, he deserved something, Heathcote said.Izzo accepted on the spot and moved into a two-bedroom garden floor apartment with one of the team managers. Back then, Mark Hollis, now the Michigan State athletic director, was the Oscar to Izzos Felix. Not that either spent a whole lot of time in their apartment. Izzo practically lived in the coaches offices. Hollis remembers the old office configuration, with the assistants all crowded into one room and their desks arranged so they could shout at one another. More often than not as Hollis was leaving, hed peer in to see Izzo still watching film, long after everyone else left.He was probably more intense as an assistant than as a head coach, Hollis said. It was from the capacity of trying to learn things, pushing, asking questions, trying to do more than what it takes to just satisfactorily do the job.3. Finding that skinny skid He was supposed to watch another kid at the Franklin Settlement Recreation Center in Detroit that day, but on his first recruiting assignment as an assistant, Izzo went off script. He kept eyeing a gangly player who made every big shot and eventually brought Heathcote for a second opinion.Tom, who the hell is that skinny kid who is always on the ball? Heathcote memorably said.His name was Steve Smith. He would go on to score 2,263 points and bring Michigan State back to the top of the Big Ten standings. Then he was a kid fresh off a late growth spurt. He also happened to be devoted to his mother. Izzo, starting a trend that would long serve him well, recruited Clara Smith as hard as he did her son.Eventually Clara decided to send her son to East Lansing where Smith not only left a mark on the basketball court, he has left an indelible one on the university. Smiths $2.5 million donation, at the time the largest by any professional athlete to a college or university (since eclipsed by Draymond Greens $3.1 million gift), made possible the Clara Bell Smith Student Athlete Academic Center.4. Juds promise By the early 1990s, Izzo was an up-and-comer, the hot young assistant catching plenty of peoples eyes. Central Michigan went after him hard after Charlie Coles left in 1991, even thought it had a chance to snare him.After that courtship fizzled, Heathcote realized he needed to entice his top assistant to stay. In 1993, two years before hed retire, Heathcote tabbed Izzo as his successor. It wasnt easy.Some people thought we should hire a black coach, Heathcote said. Some others wanted us to open it up and see who would apply. I had to work hard to get him the job.Heathcote thought the continuity would be best for the school. He remembered when his own mentor, Marv Harshman, was forced out at Washington and the school went outside for his replacement. The move began a downward spiral for the Huskies. More, though, he thought Izzo was ready.He got better every single year at the things a head coach has to do, he said. Work on the floor, recruiting, working with the media, he was the logical and best choice for Michigan State.5. Have basketballs, will travel He has played on an aircraft carrier and at military bases, on the East Coast and the West. That mentality started quite literally in Izzos first season as a head coach. In 1995-96, the Spartans played at Maui, at Arkansas, at Louisville, at Kansas State and at Oklahoma State. Izzo, though, couldnt get anyone to return the games, struggling to get any home-and-home series.Finally in 1997, Izzo turned to the man who built a Hall of Fame career off of playing anyone anywhere, signing a home-and-home with John Chaney and Temple.I remember he said to me, Just keep doing what youre doing. Youll get there, Izzo recalled.Izzo got there that same season, with Michigan State earning its first NCAA tournament bid. The Spartans havent missed since, a run of 19 consecutive years.6. Finding the Flintstones Antonio Smith was the first recruit to sign with the new Michigan State head coach. He also started the Flintstone pipeline. Next came Morris Peterson and then Mateen Cleaves and finally, Charlie Beell, the four kids who grew up together in Flint, Michigan, pledging their basketball futures to Izzo and Michigan State.dddddddddddd.If together they marked the turning point for Izzo, individually Cleaves served as the catalyst.The point guard who would go on to forge such a tight bond with his coach that each would include the other in their sons names -- Steven Mateen Izzo and Mateen Izzy Cleaves. Cleaves was heavily recruited, wooed by Florida State just after the Charlie Ward hype, and Michigan, which still enjoyed the glow from its 1989 national championship. But Cleaves was memorably involved in a car accident on his official visit with the Wolverines. Later, it would be revealed, he and Michigan players were returning from the home of Ed Martin, the booster who would lead to the Wolverines issues with the NCAA. Izzo, through dogged determination and careful wooing of Cleaves mother, won the recruiting battle. Cleaves, in return, changed Izzos career. The three-time team captain and three-time All-American led the Spartans to their first NCAA tournament under Izzo, the coachs first Final Four, and of course, the 2000 national championship.7. Standing up the big boys Today he is known as Mr. March, Izzos ability to win games when it matters most as good as any in the history of the game. Only five other coaches can match or better his seven Final Four trips. But in 1999 he was just beginning to build his reputation, his Spartans that year earning their first Final Four berth under Izzo. Michigan State rebounded from a 13-point deficit to beat defending national champion Kentucky in the Elite Eight to get there. Their reward in St. Petersburg, Florida, was a date with a loaded Duke team. Mike Krzyzewski who already was in the seventh Final Four of his career. Been there, done that program vs. giddy newcomer, one Florida newspaper reporter termed the semifinal. The Spartans would lose the game, 68-62, but serve notice that the newcomers were also a new force. I think we showed the world that we can compete with them and that were a good team, Charlie Bell said afterward.8. A call that changed it all With 3:43 left in the Midwest Regional final and Michigan State up by one, officials simultaneously whistled Charlie Bell for a block and Iowa States Paul Shirley for a charge on Shirleys made bucket.The basket was waved off and Shirley hit with his fifth foul. The Spartans would go on to win the game (an irate Larry Eustachy, the then Iowa State coach, would watch the end from the locker room, ejected after arguing the call). A euphoric crowd at the regional site in Auburn Hills celebrated Michigan States return to the Final Four.This time, Michigan State no longer was the new kid on the block. With Cleaves -- coming back from a sprained ankle -- leading the way, the Spartans beat Florida and its upstart coach, a guy by the name of Billy Donovan, to win their first national championship.It was painful, but I wasnt thinking about that, Cleaves told the Lansing State Journal, reminiscing about the championship game years later, All that I was thinking about was winning a national championship -- a goal we set when I was 18 years old, and coach Izzo was in Flint, Michigan, sitting in my living room. Thats all I was thinking about, accomplishing that goal.9. Home-court advantage A record crowd of 72,456 packed into Ford Field for the 2009 Final Four. Esimates that 72,000 were wearing Michigan State gear were greatly exaggerated. It was more like 72,400.If there was a moment that crystallized the love between school and coach, this was it.I told the players before the game that Id coached in four Final Fours, but I didnt think anything that happened in them could prepare me for what it was going to feel like walking out of that tunnel tonight, Izzo said after the Spartans beat UConn in the semifinals to move on to the title game against North Carolina. I was right; Ive never felt anything quite like that.The emotional ride for Izzo, one in which he willingly shouldered the responsibility of giving downtrodden Detroit a reason to celebrate, was the end of a difficult road for the Spartans. Expected to win early, they survived myriad injuries to reach their dream destination -- a hometown national championship game.North Carolina, heavily favored all season, throttled the Spartans and silenced the crowd, but nothing would dull the shine on that unforgettable moment for Izzo, or for Michigan State.10. Saying no to the NBA It lasted only nine days. It seemed a lot longer. Izzos midsummer romance with the Cleveland Cavaliers dominated the news cycle in July, 2010, with the Cavs dangling upwards of $6 million a year to lure Izzo away from Michigan State. Izzo thought long and hard about leaving the Spartans.He kept his old roommate -- and current boss -- apprise