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Laia Palau (Barcelona, 42 years old) ended her career as a basketball player a month ago. After more than 25 years as a professional, where she has bounced from the Czech Republic to Australia and has won 45 titles (33 at clubs and 12 with the national team), the player dressed long.
-How did you decide to retire?
-I didn’t get up one day and decided. I’ve been wondering about it for many years. Every summer, when it was time to renew her contract, she tried to be very sure if she was going to be able to give everything. After Tokyo I realize that I didn’t want to play here anymore, but I did want to be here. When I finished the season I said ‘up to here’. The following week I started working for Girona and the next I was here with the national team.
Now I am in the middle of the process, I have not changed my life.
-He didn’t see himself outside of basketball.
-I want to be very close to him, but I also need to know how. I don’t want to go crazy, make decisions that enslave me forever. I have committed myself to the club and the Federation, but always with my eyes wide open because I have to discover what my relationship with basketball should be. As a manager, as a coach, as a sports director, as a communicator… but always around this world, it is my world. I’ve been in it for a long time and I’ve earned a space and a voice. In women’s basketball we complain a lot that there is a lot to do, and I have the opportunity to do those things.
-What did your body say to you at 42 years of age and a 25-year career in the elite?
-My body is fine. That is why it is difficult for me to make the final decision, because I am 42 years old and I feel very well. It is true that there are very terrible days but I was always there to play, I am not dragging myself. It hasn’t been a brilliant year, I haven’t won anything and this is significant for me. I didn’t want this to happen again and I also wanted to avoid major injuries, spending the whole season in and out of the team. These are things that have tipped the balance. I am going to give the energy that I could have given to another year of racing to this new stage. I didn’t want to end up disgusted, to break this beautiful relationship I had with basketball. It has to be ‘I love you forever’.
-How was women’s basketball when you landed and how is it now? How much has it changed?
-It was not very difficult to evolve. We came from a wasteland. Everything has its process. Several things happen at the same time. The change comes when the Federation begins to invest more, 20 years ago. José Luis Sáez decides that it is necessary to give the matter a little more rope. Then a very powerful generation comes together that wins everything and forces the press to write about what is happening. The national league is also growing, and there are several millionaire projects that raise the level. Then it was shit, because with the crisis everything went to hell, the league was abandoned and there are a few years of navigation. Those of the national team were playing away. Now it’s buoyed up again, with the Federation supporting it and people being more aware. But make no mistake, there are a billion things that are still wrong. Surviving is complicated.
-How did you feel in your debut against Italy, did it make you want to take off your tracksuit and jump on the track?
-I have no problem with this. It was very clear to me, there is plenty of relief and for a long time. In basketball, to do it well, you don’t have to just shoot baskets. I love to see them, the last few years my brain has been very compartmentalized between playing and seeing them from afar, I was looking at other things. For me to see Maite or Silvia… I miss the costumes, the laughter and the silliness of the team. But it is true that now I am very close and there are moments on the track where I think, ‘I would solve this like this and not that way’. Obviously I’m not going to be looking at the ceiling, basketball freaks me out. I am in training and there is a part that I share with the technicians. The other day on the bench, well great. You don’t know the peace of mind it gives me, and I was so nervous, praying that they didn’t screw up. It is a different position, another mental plane. I do not have ultimate responsibility. I care about my plot and I noticed it a lot. Maybe in a while I think it’s shit, my adrenaline doesn’t flow, but right now I’m fine. I’m not 35, I’ve been here a lot. I do not have the feeling that I have left a plate to clean. I have had a spectacular career.
-And now?
-This concentration is very important because we start with a new generation, a new coach… In November we play the European Championship because Spain has to be at the top. It is a window to assume concepts. I am very excited about youth. There are many who have been here for ten or 15 years, and I don’t have to tell you so much about them. I am more aware of the generation of 97 and everything that comes after. Being close to them and pushing them to where we are interested, that they are plugged in and accompany them in their life process of what it means to be a player. If they have me here, having been a player and with my career, then I think I am an authorized person to guide them.
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