Rudy Fernández, during a match. / Real Madrid
Some days ago Rudy Fernández He publicly announced that this was his last season.to. This is something we could already imagine after reading his message after playing this season in Badalona. That was his home, the club where he trained at the highest level and his words showed that that day was the last game he played at the Olímpic, the palace where Joventut, the club that discovered him, plays its games.
Rudy has been a different player, one of those who rarely comes out. And I’m not just saying that because of what he does on the court. Also because of how he is off the court. He is one of those players with personality, who has an opinion. That sometimes makes people love you or hate you and that has been a price he has had to pay for being the way he is.
On the field he has been differential. An impressive winner. I was lucky to have contact with him when I was junior. At that stage of his career he was the milk. One of those players who made a difference, that you saw play and knew that he was going to succeed. And he already had a very special personality. It was easy to get it right with him when you thought that kid would be a star in the ACB.
Later he showed that the ACB was even little and he was able to cross the pond and play in the NBA. His professional career at Real Madrid and the Spanish team is marked by triumphs. He was even able to win titles with Joventut alongside Ricky and directed by Aíto García Reneses. It is impossible to forget his matches with the Spanish team in all those achievements with the golden generation. His matches against the United States with all the NBA stars at the Olympic Games were memorable.
In recent seasons, where his role in playing minutes was not so important, he has continued to be a fixture for Scariolo, Laso and Mateo, his coaches. And he did not have as many minutes due to his physical problems, mainly back problems, which have never allowed him to have a constant performance. But even so, you only had to read or listen to the statements of his teammates to know what it was like to have Rudy in the locker room.
Without playing many minutes, going out on the field in specific but important minutes, He was the leader of a team that we all know what he has achieved in recent years. Nobody can doubt how important he was for Real Madrid, along with Llull and Chacho, in the Euroleague that the Madrid team won last season. Rudy didn’t have that many minutes but he was decisive in the moments of truth. And the thing is, when other younger players with brutal potential had their arms shrink, he was there to take responsibility and take important shots.
While his physique allowed it He was a player with a brutal ability to attack the rim or shoot three points. When those injuries began to affect him, he was able to adapt to the circumstances by limiting his ability to go to the rim and enhancing his shooting.
But where Rudy has always been unique is his defensive work. There is no player in Europe so good in defending the man without the ball. Nobody. At least I haven’t seen it. His ability to be in the passing line, to help his teammates, was clinical. He turned help-side defense into an art because of how he was able to position himself and make defensive decisions. And this is what will make him eternal and that he will never retire because it should be mandatory for all coaches, especially those in the youth team, to study his defensive movements with the man without the ball to teach the younger players. But it should also be an obligation for professional players or players who want to be professional to study Rudy to learn how he defends himself without the ball and on the help side.
As he himself said in the announcement of his farewell, it was time to think about other things. Let’s hope that some of them are linked to the baloncesto because surely he has many things to contribute. In fact, even Scariolo has him in his thoughts for the preparation of the Pre-Olympic that the Spanish team must compete in. But if that’s not the case, if those other things no longer have anything to do with basketball, it doesn’t matter to us because players like him never retire because of everything he has given us, taught us and will teach those of us who continue to dedicate ourselves. to basketball.
2024-04-14 05:01:37
#reference #Opinión #Málaga
