Marc Gasol, with the shirts of Girona, Toronto, Memphis and Los Angeles Lakers. /
The president and star of Basketball Girona puts the defensive improvement of UEMC Real Valladolid to the test this Saturday
The best player in the competition arrives in Pisuerga, and with him lands a growing team that has won its last four games (only Granada has that same dynamic) and is already looking face to face at those who are going to fight until the last day for getting his head into the ‘play-off’ for promotion. It goes without saying that Basquet Girona has nothing to do with the one that succumbed in the first round against Real Valladolid (70-73), still with Carles Marco on the bench and without the help of Marc Gasol.
Since landing, the balance of the Catalans has been eating ground to direct rivals (5-2 with Gasol on court) in the same proportion that their game and their resources have been growing thanks to the incorporation of a series of players in the market winter, the case of Urtasun or the Argentinian Fjellerup. With Sargatal at the controls, the Catalan team is another. And as such it is analyzed and as such it will be treated this afternoon in Valladolid (8:00 p.m.).
«We received the best player in the league, but he is very well accompanied by players like Sabat, Franch, Urtasun, Fjellerup,… They are a good group that is achieving results, but we are going to give everything to compete and try to win, as always”, summarizes Roberto González, who logically prefers to keep the cards he will use to try to stop the ‘Gasol effect’.
“If I had a plan, this is not the time to say it, but if I had, others would have already done it and surely others would have copied it. It is not easy to stop Marc because he is not what he does, but what he makes others do. He is a great passer and he has an incredible reading of the game », comments the Valladolid coach.
Nobody is going to discover this afternoon the youngest of the Gasols, the only active player who won the NBA ring (Toronto Raptors) and the world title in the same year (only he and Lamar Odom, already retired, have achieved it). That magical summer of 2019 is not so far away in which Marc, exhausted after playing 115 NBA games behind his back, accepted the challenge of wearing the Spanish team’s jersey once to lead it to gold, first with 33 points in the semifinals against Australia and already in the final with 22 against Argentina.
The youngest of the Gasols signs almost double figures on average (14 points and 9.5 rebounds) since he landed in the LEB Gold League
It was precisely another World Cup, the one in Saitama (Japan) in 2006, the one that put him in the showcase almost by chance due to Fran Vázquez’s injury. Pepu Hernández did not think about it and opted for a 21-year-old boy – to the detriment, then, of Hernández Sonseca –, with an obvious tendency to gain weight who took that debut as the definitive opportunity. In fact, the image of Marc with the hachimaki on his head – a cloth ribbon that for the Japanese symbolizes effort and perseverance – is already iconic in the history of Spanish basketball.
That medal that was hung premiered an unparalleled record that includes two Olympic silvers (Beijing’2008 and London’2012), two World Cups (Japan and China), and two Europeans (Poland’2009 and Lithuania’2011), in addition to a silver ( 2007) and two continental bronzes (2013 and 2017).
If we add an ACB league with FC Barcelona (2003-04), a Eurocup title in his first stage in Girona (2006-07), and the ring he won in Toronto, we round off a record only comparable to that of his brother Paul.
At 37 years old and after thirteen seasons in the best league in the world, Marc Gasol ignored offers from several American franchises and half of Europe to opt for the team he presides over, and with which in just 8 days he already signed star numbers (14 points and 9.5 rebounds in 22 minutes of play).
