The point guard retires after 20 years of an amazing professional career, in which he fulfilled his NBA dream, triumphed in Madrid and won titles in Russia and Italy. Beyond the enormous record of achievements, also a world champion with Spain, he leaves a unique trace of love for the basket.
The parents of Sergio Rodriguez They met on a basketball court. That could explain a lot of things. “When I was born, the first gifts were basketball toys.” Specifically, a Celtics basket that he played with compulsively in his room. That too. Or perhaps the secret of chachismo, that mark for eternity of an unrepeatable player, is a phrase of Pablo Laso: “Most importantly, he sees this as a game.”
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Sergio Rodríguez’s potion in his love affair with the Final Four: “Having a good time and a lot of adrenaline”
Pepa Hernández, the coach who made him debut at the age of 17 – in the fifth game of the ACB finals, at the Palau – used to use a play on words with his pupil, who would also be two years later in the world gold in Saitama with the selection. The letters that make up Sergio’s name are the same as risk. Risk, imagination, naturalness, daring, talent, professionalism and above all, again, a lot of love for something that he always saw as that, a game. Chacho’s amazing journey over two decades is all that. From Tenerife to Getxo at 14 years old, from Siglo XXI to Madrid, from Estudiantes to Portland, from New York (passing through Sacramento) back to Madrid, from Real Madrid to Philadelphia, from the NBA to Moscow, from CSKA to Milan and from Armani again to Real Madrid, to close a career full of successes, three Euroleagues, one World Cup, two Eurobasket, Leagues and Cups in Spain, Russia and Italy… and a complete Euroleague MVP in the 2013-2014 season.
But Sergio Rodríguez is much more than his record, it is almost a philosophy. A player who transcends. He is Chacho, the nickname they gave him in his first preselection with Spain, in 2002, because he kept saying, like a good Canarian, that “boy.” He then played at La Salle with his first teacher, Pepe Luque, and it was just before leaving for Bilbao, to that experience called Siglo XXI, where young cadets and juniors lived together and trained in basketball. It was around then that he took his physical growth spurt, although they still called him “moth” because he didn’t stop moving.
Sergio considers those years away from home, prior to Estudiantes, key to everything that was going to happen later. The first year in Madrid, where he missed his studies at Ramiro, he combined the EBA team with the junior team and had been on vacation for a month when Pepu called him for the final against Barça. The night before he had been watching the NBA and a neighbor had to wake him up. That penetrating basket in the Palau is the beginning of an era. “Those 20 seconds at the end of the league with Estudiantes marked me. I had never been called up for the first team. I came from vacation, I didn’t know the plays, I was worried… That tension from minute one as a professional has helped me,” He confessed in an interview with this newspaper years later.
That summer he also won the junior European Championship, in Zaragoza, under the orders of Chus Vidorreta and with the 10 on his back (the eternal 13 was worn by Antelo). “A boy with a lot of hook,” titled the first article about him in EL MUNDO, a journalist who was at the same time an admirer (like everyone else) of that unusual magician.
“The dream of my entire life.” The NBA was the next station, which he arrived at when he was 20 years old – two years before he was in the US for the first time, at the Nike Hoop Summit in San Antonio -, world champion (that semifinal against Argentina…), number 27 of the draft (by the Suns who had Steve Nash and they decide to transfer him to Portland) and without knowing English. And with the blow of reality of so many, a lot of bench and “few explanations” of Nate McMillan. But without losing the essence. “I could be sad if I were here wasting my time, but on the contrary. I am improving technically and physically and learning a language. Everything is going very well for me,” she confessed in an interview with ABC in December 2006.
Sergio Rodríguez poses for EL MUNDO in New York, during his time with the Knicks. THE WORLD
He spent three and a half seasons in Portland (coinciding with Rudy Fernandezwith whom fate had prepared a farewell at the same time), a few months in Sacramento (with notion) and another course in the Knicks, life in the Big Apple. The dream came true, with all its reality and all its harshness as well. He rubbed shoulders with those he admired (Iverson, Garnett…), he danced in that idealized world since childhood and even collected unforgettable sporting moments. But the desire for more accumulated. As brave to leave as to return, without ever uttering a phrase of regret, and a signing for Real Madrid Messina.
That environment was not at all simple, where, he himself admits, everything was magnified in a negative way. With Messina fled and Lele Molin At the controls, the whites sneaked into a Final Four many years later, which was going to be the first of many for Chacho (although that was a setback at Sant Jordi, they would end up playing in six finals and winning three Euroleagues). Without knowing it, that summer of shootings, of the unwelcome arrival of Pablo Laso, was the beginning of an era.
Rudy, Chacho and Llull, after winning the 2015 Euroleague. EL MUNDO
With Chacho’s personal explosion in the 2012 playoffs, especially in the semifinals against Baskonia, when his virtuosity and imagination were joined by success from the triple. That first stage of lasism was the zenith of him, the Euroleague MVP, the title in 2015 at the Palace… Until the NBA crossed his path again. And childhood dreams are dreams. Although Chacho and Well whether they were parents of Carmela and although Claudio, his bulldog, could not travel with the family to Philadelphia, where he chose an apartment in the city center.
The Sixers found a different point guard, mature, intelligent, ambitious. El Chacho attended the debut of Joel Embiidwho greeted him with a comb when this newspaper visited in February 2017. He was less in the rotation of Brett Brown and the offers to continue for another year, too unstable, did not convince him.
Sergio Rodríguez, after becoming Euroleague champion in 2019 with CSKA. Juan Carlos Hidalgo
And when it was time to return to Europe, Madrid had already put together its team and CSKA put on the table one of those offers that cannot be rejected. From the USA to Russia, the Rodríguez family, a vital adventure that was going to crown with their second Euroleague, in Vitoria 2019 (first Spaniard to win it) with a foreign club. From there to Milan, always highly sought after, the reunion with Messina, where every Armani fan and even the owner himself fell in love with him. Giorgio, who even said: “I like everything about him. I love his girls. His attitude on and off the court is exemplary. And then his smile and his deep gaze say a lot about him, they are the mirror of his soul.” And a couple of seasons to close the circle at Real Madrid, until another Euroleague, the one in Kaunas, the main protagonist of Chacho in the Final Four and in the fierce quarter-final series against Partizan in which he put the team on his back, another wonderful flash.
And, during all this time, always his beloved team, from which he retired after the Tokyo Games and was absent, for rest, in the 2019 World Cup that won gold in Beijing. More than 150 games and seven medals with Spain, from Saitama to Saitama.
“I always dreamed of retiring while being physically fit and winning my last game. And now life has offered me this gift,” says the person who did not want tributes while playing in his farewell letter. Well, for him, basketball was always fun, not nostalgia. He kept the secret and the baskets already miss Chachismo, the eternal 13.
2024-06-19 15:45:16
#basket #Celtics #magical #seconds #legend #Real #Madrid
