A special honor for the former basketball superstar Pau Gasol: The Los Angeles Lakers will hang the legendary Spaniard’s jersey under the hall ceiling and his number 16 will no longer be awarded.
The ceremony will take place on March 7, 2023 during the season game against the Memphis Grizzlies, another former Gasol team.
“A champion, a legend and forever a part of the Lakers family,” the Lakers wrote Twitter. Gasol will be the seventh European to receive this honor in the NBA. So far, Croatian Drazen Petrovic (New Jersey Nets, posthumously), Serbians Peja Stojakovic and Vlade Divac (Sacramento Kings), Lithuanian Zydrunas Ilgauskas (Cleveland Cavaliers), Frenchman Tony Parker (San Antonio Spurs) and Dirk Nowitzki (Dallas Mavericks) received ) the special award.
Gasol played for the Lakers between 2008 and 2014 and won two championship titles in 2009 and 2010 alongside the late Kobe Bryant. Wearing the purple and gold jersey, he was nominated for the All-Star Game three times (2009, 2010, 2011). Gasol will become the eleventh player whose jersey will be retired by the Lakers, after players like Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal or Kobe Bryant. “More than grateful and honored,” Gasol wrote on Twitter.
