There are not many times that, throughout life, we see that excellence, coherence and beauty coincide in someone. Such transcendent traits appear unusual in the imperfect nature of human existence. It’s hard to find them. Above all, once some margin is left for time to do its work and qualify the idealizations and absolutes, so common in early youth. In that blessed period, the author we liked the most was, of course, the most relevant in the history of literature. Our favorite music group was the most important in the history of music. In that paradise, our favorite basketball player was, without a doubt, the best basketball player.
Once the cycle of quick judgments and accelerated conclusions is over, time provides us with nuance and balance. In return, it makes it difficult for us to encounter indisputable excellence and clear examples of coherence. Leave flashes of dazzling beauty for special occasions.
If it is difficult to find any of those things separately, it is completely extraordinary to find them all together. However, sometimes it happens. For example, a summer day in 2006 happens when you turn on the television to watch Spain play a game against Argentina in the semifinal of the basketball world cup in Japan.
And suddenly, you notice a player. And your gaze stays glued. You knew him, and you already liked him, but you had never seen him on such an important stage. You are left with your mouth open when you see him score impossible baskets between Manu Ginobili and Scola, when they pass the balls over the heads of Nocioni and Prigioni. You can’t believe he plays the way he does, with all that fluidity and all that nerve.giving shape to a fun, unexpected, casual, fresh basketball, full of truth and beauty.
A few weeks later, you find out in a newspaper that he is going to the NBA to play in Portland. He doesn’t miss you at all. Throughout those years, you look for images of his game, you watch some of his games and you try to check if what you saw once and marveled at was a matter of a specific championship or if that is what it seemed like.
You follow him in Portland, in Sacramento and in New York. You wait for him every summer playing with the national team and you see him win, in his own right, a place in the best generation in the history of Spanish basketball. At his side, Pau Gasol, Marc Gasol, Juan Carlos Navarro, Carlos Jiménez, Jorge Garbajosa, Felipe Reyes, Rudy Fernández, Sergio Llul, Ricky Rubio, José Manuel Calderón, Raúl López… An unrepeatable generation that touches the sky of world basketball while Over the years he has won all the titles imaginable and is filled with medals; European, World Cup and Olympic silver medals after games for the ages in which they compete face to face against a team from the United States that appears with two of the best teams this sport has ever seen. You see him being part of the group of players that forever changed the history of basketball in Spain.
You continue his trail in Madrid, in Philadelphia, in Moscow, in Milan and again in Madrid. And you see that his entire career keeps the same game traits intact; the same levels, the same style, the same values and the same beauty.
You realize that something unique happens to you with him, 20 years later, you never get tired of watching him play. He is still the same player capable of breaking with the predictable phases of basketball and its most schematic and boring moments. 20 years later, every time he grabs the ball you know something different is about to happen. 20 years later, you continue to be amazed by discovering with it invisible lines of the game, planes of reality that you did not see, spaces that you did not know were there, connections that you did not even imagine.
20 years later, you like everything he does, it interests you, it surprises you
The conclusion you are left with is that you are looking at your favorite player for one main reason; It has shown you something that you thought was impossible as possible. You can achieve the maximum of excellence in a highly demanding job, giving it a plasticity and beauty rarely seen and maintaining as non-negotiable a set of human values that you admire; humility, honesty, generosity and gratitude. It turns out that it was possible to put all of that together at once.
It is not many times that the idealizations of our youth and our encounter with the great conclusions of the past stand the test of time so well, but that is how it has been. Many of us have been lucky enough that the player who once left us speechless two decades ago has continued to do so, year after year, throughout this time and until the last times we have seen him play; in the final rounds of the Euroleague or lifting, once again, the ACB title with Real Madrid.
The laws of basketball should prohibit, always in self-defense, any possibility for such a player to retire. For how well he has treated the game, for the beauty that he has given it, for the importance that he has given to this sport and for all the importance that he has always taken away from himself.
However, the laws of this sport are not well written and today he announced his retirement
He leaves the job to which he has dedicated his life. There is no doubt that he leaves it better than how he found it when he reached the elite. He leaves it bigger, more beautiful, higher.
For the fans of this country there is an indelible mark. For the generations of players to come, the example that you can be one of the best players in the history of this country while being a great person full of values. For many of us, the certainty that, even if he is not going to play any more games, he will always be our favorite player. We will always compare everything we see in others with everything we saw in him. And he will always be that kid who smiled at life and the game and that mixed, as if by magic, the excellence of the NBA and the fun of a school playground in Tenerife. For many of us, basketball should always resemble the way Sergio Rodríguez plays.
Thank you for everything you have done, teacher. Thanks a lot. and happy life. May it be filled with at least all the happiness that you have given to the rest of us.
Eduardo Madina
2024-06-20 04:22:56
#mark #left #Sergio #Rodríguez #Eduardo #Madina
