Pau Gasol will be a member of the Hall of Fame

ESPN has announced that along with the 42-year-old Spanish power forward, legends such as Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Becky Hammon and Gregg Popovich will also enter the ‘Hall of Fame’. The announcement will be on April 1, during the NCAA Final Four (university basketball league in the United States) to be held in Houston.

This is yet another recognition of the career of someone who marked a before and after in Spanish basketball. The one from Sant Boi retired in October 2021 with a record that includes the two NBA rings won with the Los Angeles Lakers and a total of eleven international medals with the Spanish team, three of them Olympic. The Spaniard played in the NBA in teams such as the Grizzlies, Lakers, Bulls, Spurs and Bucks, in which he came to play 1,226 regular season games in the competition (1,150 of them as a starter) with statistics of 17 points, 9.2 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.6 blocks on average per game. He has been a six-time All Star.

The winner of the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports is the first non-American player to have his jersey removed by the Lakers and the seventh European in history to have his jersey removed in an NBA franchise, behind stars like Serbian Drazen Petrovic, first of all (3, Nets), Vlade Divac (21), and ‘Peja’ Stojakovic (16) – both with that honor in Sacramento, Lithuanian Zydrunas Ilgauskas (11) in the Cavs, Frenchman Tony Parker (9) saw his shirt hang from the Spurs pavilion and German Dirk Nowitzki (41) has his shirt retired in Dallas. There’s no more. Pau is one of only four players in the history of the competition with at least 20,000 points, 11,000 rebounds, 3,500 assists and 1,900 blocks added during the regular season, along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. Big words.