The Spanish basketball team unites in its friendly against Venezuela (FEB)
“1, 2, 3, wall!” If you follow the Spanish men’s basketball team, surely you have heard this phrase on many occasions. This is the slogan that the different members of the national team usually sing, loudly, when they are about to jump onto the field to play one of their matches. The proclamation may refer to the good defense that Spain usually exhibits. Also, and this is where the expression seems to come from, to the wall, literally, that was jumped over years ago, secretly and to make a pineapple going out, in the then usual concentration hotel in San Fernando (Cádiz). And even, if we stick to the strictest news, to the strength that this sports and human group has been showing lately when it comes to facing a series of adversities that are far from minor in terms of mental health.
Feeling deprived of it has led one of the captains and highest references of La Familia, Ricky Rubio, to abandon, for the moment sine die, the sport of the basket. The news fell like a jug of cold water among locals and strangers, since the return of the NBA point guard greatly excited everyone ahead of the next World Cup, in which Sergio Scariolo and his pupils defend the title. But the 2019 gold MVP has decided to put himself ahead of everyone else, meeting with exceptional support. Widespread, but especially among his glorious summer companions.
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Saying that they understand you better than anyone else might seem like a set phrase, but the truth is that it is. In recent times, Spanish basketball internationals have shown, more than ever, that they feel and suffer. They are heroes on the court, but also ordinary people off it: after suffering some serious problems, they have been able to rise above and compete at as high a level as ever.
In 2019, Rudy Fernández received one of the worst news that can be communicated to one in this life: his father had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The blow was such that the current captain of the Spanish team came to consider giving up everything. Which he didn’t exactly do for his parent. “He forced me to promise that I would never say no to Scariolo’s call if I saw myself in a position to contribute something to the team,” says the Spaniard in the prologue to The Unexpected Gold, the official book of the 2022 Eurobasket. A title that it was won with Rudy in charge of the locker room, just four months after Rodolfo Fernández senior passed away after his long illness.
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The Real Madrid player also attended the World Cup in the year in which his personal ordeal began. And, just like last year, he returned with the cup under his arm. In an exercise of integrity that Felipe Reyes already starred in his day, to whom exactly the same thing happened, he bit the guts and found comfort in his basketball family. Tears, at some point, were inevitable. But courage, along with fulfilling parental wishes, could do much more.
Rudy Fernández in training with Spain (FEB)
This is the case of another Mallorcan, Álex Abrines, the one who may have the most similarities with Ricky’s. His American adventure ended abruptly: the Oklahoma City Thunder, in which he had played since 2016, decided to cut him off in February 2019 for “personal reasons.” He himself recounted what happened: “Everything I was living was a dream, but I exploded. I started to stop enjoying. And in a month he hit me with a block that I couldn’t go out on the track. I decided to step away from the team and start mentally recovering with professionals. Knowing that in a week or a month I would have to travel with the team again caused me a lot of anxiety, and I thought that I would not be able to overcome this disease of depression and anxiety without leaving the team and dedicating myself to improving my mind.
Due to all this, Abrines decided to put basketball on hold for almost six months, until he returned to Barça. “Many times I have thought about throwing in the towel. I told myself that I would find other ways to inspire myself and bring out the best in me. But nothing and no one has penetrated me as deeply as you. So I have steeled myself to end this nightmare. And I have achieved it. I have recovered my smile, the desire to see you and to spend one and a thousand hours together again. Dear ball, I’m back, ”he stated when making his return official.
#dearball???? pic.twitter.com/AWnh5JDxeq
— Alex Abrines (@alexabrines) July 3, 2019
Sergio Llull is another prominent member of the absolute hardened team in overcoming adversities. None greater than the one he had to face in 2017, which he opposed to being the best year of his career and ended up leaving him with mixed feelings: some very good ones until a fateful August 9 and others more bittersweet thereafter.
In the middle of the Eurobasket preparation tour, the Menorcan ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in Tenerife. The worst injury of his life kept him in the dry dock for eight and a half months, until April 2018. An illness of this nature could have taken his career ahead, physically and mentally. However, Llull gave a master class in self-improvement at all times.
Sergio Llull and Ricky Rubio in training with Spain (FEB)
Five years later, the smile did not fade from his face either, despite staying, once again, at the gates of playing a European Championship with his friends. In 2022, it was a muscle injury in the left leg adductor, against Iceland, that left him without a major tournament. At least, in body, not in soul: he was more than present in the subsequent competition and was one more in the celebration, already in Madrid, of the feat of Berlin. Although he was offered to live the machada live, El Increíble preferred to follow it, as one more spectator and reserving the spotlight for those who could play, from home.
This same 2023, Darío Brizuela has had his particular dose of resilience. It was all a bad dream, but in the middle of the Copa del Rey, which he would end up winning with Unicaja, he could no longer contain his emotions. “They have been the worst days of my life. My son is in ICU, he is fine. He has recovered. I doubted whether to come, but my colleagues convinced me. Everything bad that he had inside has come out ”, he confessed at the foot of the track in Badalona, just after leading his team to the semifinals.
We were in mid-February: Bruno, the baby of the new Barça component, had been born a month earlier and had sudden health complications that led him to undergo intestinal surgery. Everything went well, with the addition that Brizuela was able to dedicate his success to him. The expressions of affection of those days will never be forgotten. “As a father I promise to remind him that he was born in Malaga, that he is there and will always be very loved and that we owe a debt to the city and his people,” he wrote when packing his bags for Barcelona.
Darío Brizuela training with Spain (FEB)
They are the most notorious and exemplary episodes of the talent that Scariolo’s boys also treasure to solve difficulties that have little or nothing to do with strictly basketball. The wall that opposes them is as or more rocky than the one that has led them to sporting glory. Along with the greatest encouragement that Ricky Rubio can now use to win, as he surely will, his own battle.
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2023-08-08 03:10:13
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