Javier Imbroda last January, when he already knew that the cancer had reproduced. /
The former basketball coach and Andalusian Minister of Education and Sports dies at the age of 61 due to the disease that was detected in 2016
“Today is a very sad day. He leaves us a great, a benchmark of our basketball. The coach who gave me the indelible opportunity to debut with the senior team. My deep condolences to family and loved ones. Rest in peace, dear Javier. This is how Pau Gasol reacted this Sunday to the death of Javier Imbroda, former national selector and Minister of Education and Sports of the Junta de Andalucía who died on Saturday afternoon at the age of 61 due to prostate cancer.
The Melilla coach was diagnosed with the disease in 2016 and has been fighting cancer for more than five years, until losing “the game he had yet to win”, as his wife told him when the doctors discovered that Imbroda was suffering from a malignant tumor grade 10, the most aggressive, and with metastasis, from which he relapsed last year.
The only Spanish basketball coach who has managed to beat the United States, at the 2002 World Cup in Indianapolis, and who also won bronze at the 2001 Eurobasket in Turkey, however, was unable to overcome his battle against cancer after being hit by a diagnosis with which he began, as he himself publicly acknowledged, “an ordeal, especially because you feel that death is coming to visit you and with the intention of staying.”
Imbroda also directed, after proclaiming himself runner-up in the ACB League with Unicaja Málaga and Caja San Fernando de Sevilla, the most successful team in Europe, Real Madrid, for one season. However, the fact of not being able to reconcile this position with that of coach forced him to leave the national team led by Pau Gasol and also formed, among others, by Juan Carlos Navarro, Felipe Reyes or Jorge Garbajosa, current president of the Spanish Federation. of Basketball (FEB), which this Sunday said goodbye to “a great person, fighter, affectionate, conciliatory and fun.”
Imbroda’s last public appearance was on March 22, at the Government Council of the Junta de Andalucía, which was held in the Sevillian town of Carmona, one month earlier, on February 20, during the break in the final of the Copa del Rey de Granada between Barcelona and Real Madrid, was honored by the ACB, in which he worked for 17 seasons as coach, and received a plaque and a heartfelt ovation from the 7,000 fans present at the Palacio de los Deportes of the Nasrid city.
open and dialoguing
Godfather of the golden generation of Spanish basketball, it was on the court where Imbroda enjoyed the most, but after directing 605 games in the elite and leaving the bench in 2007, he decided to embark on a new adventure as an expert in ‘coaching’ and later in offices , to start his political career, in Ciudadanos. Until becoming a councilor of the Junta de Andalucía, a community that the former selector relaunched through sport, with agreements such as the one that led to Seville and, specifically, to the La Cartuja stadium, to host the 2020 European Football Championship and of the 2021 League of Nations.
Of an open and dialogic character, one of the main virtues that he exhibited as a coach and politician, as head of education his fight was focused on depoliticizing it and carrying out new initiatives that caused rejection, such as tutoring classes during the summer in schools and institutes.
The Junta de Andalucía decreed this Sunday three days of mourning for the death of Imbroda, one of the most important figures in Spanish basketball, “a wise man of sport, of business, of education… of life”, as highlighted his friend Albert Rivera. The former leader of Ciudadanos was the one who appointed Imbroda so that the former selector would lead, in the regional elections of 2018, the lists for Malaga, the city in which he died and was always so united.
