The center, who is still without a contract for next season, is focusing his emotions on the national team, with which he is seeking to compete in his second Olympics at the age of 22. “Our goal is still to win World Cups, European Championships…” he told EL MUNDO. Finland, rival on Saturday in the semi-finals
At the Santiago Apóstol school in Valencia, in the heart of Cabanyal, the children, most of them of Gypsy ethnicity – the centre welcomes students from families without resources – look with wide eyes at the giant in front of them. But the boy himself is even more astonished. Usman Garuba to the questions, each one more ingenious than the last.
To know more
200 times Scariolo on the eve of one of his biggest challenges with the national team: “I have learned a lot”
To know more
Rudy Fernández: “After all the injuries I had to rebuild my career”
“Garuba, are you a millionaire?” “How old are you?” “What shoe size do you wear?” “How many goals have you scored?” Usman escapes the interrogation, promoted by the Kellogg’s Social Basketball Campus, with a half smile and all the wit he has at his disposal at that time of the morning. A small oasis of disconnection in the middle of a week of total tension, a tricky Pre-Olympic tournament in which Spain, after defeating Lebanon and Angola, is playing in two life-or-death games to be in the next Paris Games.
For the Azuqueca de Henares native, it would be his second Olympic appointment at just 22 years old. The national team, like for so many others, is his playground. Here, Usman is the difference. The guy that the NBA has not yet fallen in love with despite his efforts, is the defensive pillar of Sergio Scariolo. And in the first two games of the tournament, despite the few minutes due to fouls, there was no one more efficient than him. Not even the almighty Saints Aldama. In Lorenzo BrownSpain’s best partial results come with Garuba on the track.
Garuba, with the children of the Kellogg’s EM Social Basketball Campus
In just over 15 minutes, a plus/minus of 16.5. 10 points, five rebounds and two blocks on average. Accelerated production. Because, as his entourage reveals, he has rarely looked at such fullness. “I’m better than ever,” he says. He didn’t play much during the season – 21 games in the G-League with the Santa Cruz Warriors (12.5 points, 10.1 rebounds) and six testimonial games with Golden State – but the San Francisco franchise was determined to improve him. Until the very day before the trip to start the concentration with Spain, the former Real Madrid player was training with the team of coaches he heads. Steve Kerr“I’ve played a few games, but a lot of minutes in the G-League. And I’ve been able to work hard on myself. In everything, the team has worked on me physically, technically, on details on the court, video sessions, shooting… It’s been important to be able to train and I thank the Warriors for helping me to be in the best shape at this moment,” he explains in conversation with EL MUNDO.
“I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I’m a great player, I’m aware of that. I really want to get my country to the Olympic Games and do well. That’s the goal,” Usman argues when asked about the feeling he transmits on the court, like a caged lion that now finds the savannah to catch its prey. Because Garuba, at this point in the summer, is without a team, with his future between offices.
“Three hours of nap”
It’s nothing new for him. It already happened last year during the World Cup. He ended up signing a two-way contract with Golden State, but at that time he had the cushion of the more than two and a half million dollars he received for his departure from the Rockets. Now that wouldn’t be enough for him, because he is still in debt to Real Madrid, with whom he agreed to pay his release clause in installments. He is waiting for the NBA rosters to be drawn up and is considering possible offers. It won’t take long for that to be resolved, perhaps days. And he always has the option of returning home, to Madrid, which would welcome him with open arms and with which there would be no problem in reaching an agreement. The logical option.
These contractual concerns are not going to slow down Garuba’s passion on the court, who, he confesses, takes a “nap of up to three hours” before each match, and who jokes in the corridors of the national team hotel in Valencia with his former teammate. Eric Gordon (“my veteran in Houston”) about that possible final on Sunday against the fearsome Bahamas. Usman has an Olympic thorn in his side that he wants to resolve. “The last Games were strange, without fans and with the Covid issue… I don’t want to say that they were a disappointment, because it’s not easy to compete there. But I think we could have taken more, a next step. But this is basketball. This year, if we get there, let’s hope so, we want to compete. We don’t want to go and already after having worked all this time,” he says.
Although many want to avoid comparisons with the past, Usman’s ambition makes him feel that winning the Pre-Olympic would not be a success. “Knowing everything we have won in previous years… We are used to winning World Championships, European Championships… That is still our goal. It is true that it would be a boost, because winning is always good,” he says about a team that is in pain after the blunder at the last World Cup and in which he, still 22 years old, is already a heavyweight.
2024-07-04 23:26:00
#dont #prove
