From Albolote to the Palace and from ‘los Álvarez’ to ‘los Díaz’, another historic day for basketball in Granada

The balloon it is a magnificent thread of our lives. The one for national teams was born in the Olympic silver in Los Angeles, traveled the long stretch of ‘the nineties’, exploded at the foot of Mount Fuji in the new century and drifted into Brizuela and Garuba; that of clubs can start with the unforgettable voice of Pedro Barthe and a robbery of Joventut, go from Spain to the United States via Gasol and lead to the heart of Pablo Laso; the most local germinates in Albolote and is planted in the capital, it starts thanks to oxygen and survives in the shopping basket.

The writers of the baskets do not reach the level of those of ‘This Is Us’, but they are close. They have been doing their job for decades, filling our existence with unforgettable moments with a colored ball and a horn. The last of those images to remember, this October 1, 2022the day that Granada returned to the national elite.

Because many of the thousands who came this Saturday to the Palacio They’ve been there many other times and I’m sure they also went to Juncaril in the ’80s. The nod to the past could not be missing in the form of a coach on the visiting bench. It was missing that Pedro Martínez gave Pablo Pin the crutch and rapier before the match.

Now they are not presiding over Murado, nor JJ, but Óscar Fernández-Arenas, who left the hair gel to Pin before the premiere. Now the box is more packed than ever with politicians and businessmen. And the stands are full of team jerseys. It’s nice that, as happens in football, there are more and more people who live the colors of their basketball team to the point of walking them down the street.

And children, many kids, that surely they will not forget the first time in the ACB. Just as 40-year-olds will forever remember a Larry Spicer basket, 30-somethings a Frankie King triple, or 20-somethings a Curtis Borchard dunk, today’s kids and youngsters will do so with Luke Maye’s 3-pointer in Fuenlabrada or with the dunks of Niang in the Palace.

‘Los Díaz’ could well be a television series, Christian Díaz the bad high school student and Jacobo Díaz a prestigious lawyer, but no. ‘Los Díaz’ is to Covirán Granada what ‘los Álvarez’ were to Oximesa, its hallmark from the most national name possible. Because, although seeing the templates of the teams it seems otherwise, the Spanish and the ACB are not at odds.

The history

Have the Coviran Granada its exotic touch with a Christian and a couple of surnames of those that appear with crooked accents to the other side, even an American with an African passport as it is now, but it is almost the only squad of the ACB that you can write without making a mistake in four names even if you have the copy next to you. And on the bench, Pin, to finish soon.

Military in the elite is used by Movistar to broadcast your matches live, although nothing like seeing it at the Palace. Although times have changed. In 2022 the radios cannot put the microphones in the dead times, nor interview the players at the break or at the end on the way to the locker room, while the referees change their trajectory so as not to step on you; the ‘scoundrel’ cannot enter the box to drink a ‘Milnoh’ and the statistics are no longer given to you at the scorer’s table at the end of the game, but rather they are sent to you by WhatsApp.

The fact that some fans missed the start of the game due to the long colas that formed at the entrance to the Palace (something to be corrected by the club for future appointments), did not subtract an iota of emotion from the Saturday afternoon-night at the Granada facility.

The CB Granada Foundation makes its debut in the ACB, the best basketball returns to Granada. It was time. From Cueto to ‘Pinzas’, from Clavero to Niang, from Iriarte to Iriarte, from Caja de Ronda to Baxi with a stop in Lugo, from Tortosa to Barragán. The basketsthe plot line of our lives.