To read this article, a couple of generations have to do an imagination exercise and all the previous ones have to do a memory exercise. In the 80s there was a bar on Campoamor Street in Madrid, very close to the Alonso Martínez metro stop, where you could find something that didn’t exist anywhere else in the city: the NBA. Can’t watch on TV, no mobile phoneswith a lot of luck you can find a poster in a magazine, but that and nothing is practically the same.

However, there, in a room of about 200 square meters, there is a huge screen that projects games that are treasures. “We basketball players went there to watch the NBA, which we knew existed and was cool, but nothing more. These people got video movies from a guy who recorded them with a camera on TV in the United States. The guy took the video tape, went to the airport, gave it to someone who was traveling and they brought it here. They picked it up here and that tape was worth gold. It was projected on a screen that had a dubious quality, nowadays young people wouldn’t last even ten minutes because imagine, a match recorded with a camera in front of a television,” explains Fernando Laura, sports journalist and photographer, and a regular at the bar. which opened in the 80s – no one seems to agree exactly when – and closed in 2005.

“This came a little after the rugby pubs that already existed in Madrid. So I started a group with the idea of ​​setting up a similar basketball pub. We were seven members. When we started looking at venues to set up, they were all very expensive and not the best. We couldn’t afford it, but then we saw one belonging to another boy, who also played basketball, in the lower categories and who owned it. It was an old dairy that had been closed for 30 years,” explains Jorge Trenco, one of the owners of the very successful bar. who, like all his partners, had a relationship with Madrid basketball. Coaches and players united to create a venue with a very particular claim: “We combined alcohol and sports, which were antagonistic things, and it seems that they went well together“.

The complexity of being able to watch American films in Madrid was tremendous, to begin with because at that time in Spain and the United States the same technology was not even used on television. This implies that, as Laura says, many of the matches are a camera recording of a screen. Juan de Miguel ran a company that was dedicated to transforming American films into others that could be seen in the Spanish system. His role is key in that story.

“They brought them to Videorepor and we converted them from 525 lines to 625. Those who went to the United States brought tapes: Víctor de la Serna, Lolo Sainz, Mario Pesquera, the Rebote people themselves, many coaches. What they were getting we converted. Aíto also brought some and Antonio Díaz Miguel brought many, of course, he was the one who brought the most“explains De Miguel, who at the time owned another similar basketball pub. The list of names he says includes four people who became Spanish national team coaches. Basketball was almost a family thing, everyone knew each other and helped each other. He had something of a tribe and that tribe had a social headquarters: the Rebote Pub.

“I was not a member by miracle, because some of those who founded it were friends of mine, like Pablo Casado, who died, and like Antonio Blanco, who has been a friend of mine since I was young. It’s true, everyone from the basketball world passed by there, everyone who came to play in Madrid went. It was one of the first places where we could see some things from the NBA and such, and some things that were coming, and the truth is that we had a great time there.” This is said by Pepu Hernández, a member of the tribe and he is also a former national team coach.

The basketball social club

“When the ACB matches were over, everyone went there. Some coach was going to prepare some matches, even in special sessions without an audience, because there were some videos of certain teams they were going to compete with. The truth is that it was a development not only recreational, so to speak, but you could also watch and even study basketball“explains Pepu.

Players, coaches, referees and journalists, all there fraternizing. “There was everyone who had to do with basketball, It was the place to do all kinds of things, do an interview, if they saw you on Rebote they treated you with more attentionit was the place where the people involved in basketball were, those who experienced basketball outside the house as well,” remembers Fernando Laura.

“It was a special thing, one of our best clients was Fernando Martín, the year before he went to the NBA he was one more, there was no discrimination based on ego. We had the Rebote awards, which were held once a year, and all the representative people of Spanish basketball came.ten or twelve awards were given, they were almost the Oscars of basketball in Madrid,” explains Trenco, the owner.

“There were coaches’ meetings, there were technical questions and criteria that were developed there with the collaboration of many, because in the end the coaches of all the teams and selectors arrived there. It makes me laugh, because I also talk about it a lot with the coaches. From now. The coaches at that time had no resources, nothing to turn to, very few things and we were hungry for information.. Now technology really gives them absolutely all the information,” says Pepu.

“There came a time when the ACB teams called us to see the players they wanted to sign. This happened with Essie Hollis, who was the best ACB player during the years he played. The Vitoria managers came to watch his videos before signing him“recalls Trenco, who tells a similar anecdote with some tapes of John Pinone at Villanova University.

There is a point here. What you see on those screens is not only the best basketball in the world, which is what the NBA continues to be today, but something that goes much further. The difference has not stopped narrowing since then, today there are Europeans who not only play there, but are superstars. At that moment they are not even close, the basketball players who play for the Lakers, the Celtics or the Sixers look more like aliens than the kids who play every Sunday in Magariños with Estudiantes or in the Palacio with Real Madrid.

“We started to see them moving there and The one who caught my attention the most was Julius Erving. What’s more, I’ve seen some images of Julius Erving lately and it continues to amaze me, mind you, when we have been able to see other things that we thought we would never see, but what do you want me to tell you? Maybe I’ll be left with that little nostalgia of having seen images that impacted me when I was maybe 18 years old,” says the former national coach.

Although for many the 80s are Magic and Bird, not without reason, Pepu’s idol was shared by many others. “Our hero was Doctor J. We had that dunk from behind the board, etched in our memory.. Every game for Doctor J’s team was sold out,” explains Fernando Laura.

Needless to say, games were watched, but the league was not followed. There was no possibility, it was difficult to know if what they were showing was something from a playoff or a regular league game. The customers commented on the plays, someone who had been traveling in the United States could boast of some more knowledge, but without excesses, what appears on that huge screen is foreign to almost everyone present, but whoever arrives falls in love with what they see. .

“What we wanted was for everyone to experience it at the same time and be able to comment; we had technicians and journalists like Manolo Saucedo. There used to be a gathering after each game, where there were about 150 people on one side, because there was almost no room for us.“says the owner.

Link on the rebound

A lot of basketball, the anecdotes are almost endless in that sense, but it is worth remembering that Pub Rebote was, that is, a bar, and you come to a bar for basketball but it has other functions in life.

“It was a joy, because it connected a lot [ríe]. I was single at that time. You got together because you knew the people and we all got together there,” says Laura. Rebote must have been the bar with the highest average height in the city, for obvious reasons. “Everyone was big there, well, except the manager, who “He was very short,” concludes the journalist. “The tall girls went there, to see what there was, there were those from Canoe, who were in charge in the Spanish league at that time,” explains Laura.

“I already started going to the NBA and I brought me sneakers that didn’t exist here, because here was John Smith and of course I arrived with some Converse of those that Doctor J wore and people were amazed, they flirted alone“says Laura, who is a machine for telling anecdotes, with grace. She had bought those sneakers that flirted by themselves after interviewing Michael Jordan in Chicago for Gigantes magazine (“he behaved with us like a true gentleman”), a visit about which he later gave a lecture in Rebote. He was a photographer and from his camera came a legendary photo of Sabonis breaking a board that decorated the premises. That also earned him a few free beers.

As in any human group at night, there were graduations. “This went in order, those who were most involved were the players. Fernando Martín and you started to bounce back, you knew that you had to wait a while for the waters to return to normal. and you were already doing your thing,” says the photographer who was a personal friend of the first Spaniard who crossed the screen and entered the NBA.

Martín was someone quite special, everyone remembers him there. “He had a character that was a bit withdrawn, he was not open, but there he managed to open up, there he was loose and calm.. It was embarrassing, but there he was just one more,” says Trenco.

The Madrid center, the “best public relations” that Rebote had, packed his suitcases and went to Portland so that his friends at the pub could see him on the screen. Today is, without a doubt, a key moment in the history of Spanish sport, but perhaps the 38 years that have passed since then have softened a little what really happened.

“Fernando went where the basketball people were, but you know he was a guy who didn’t want to show himself too much publicly. Of course he went. I remember the farewell tribute that was given to him, which I attended. Logically in Rebote. I tell you things as I saw them. When Fernando Martín goes to the United States to play in the NBA, he leaves happy, he does what he has to do, but no one else was happy.. Neither in his club were they happy, nor in the Spanish team were they happy. I tell you how we felt it at that moment and how I still feel it now. It was not a pleasant farewell, some said where is this guy going? We gave him a farewell tribute and I think it was one of the small joys that he took away,” concludes Pepu Hernández.

The pub closed in 2005 after years and years of success. Pay television arrived, the Internet arrived and some of the things that happened there were no longer original. Times were going differently, but all those consulted continue to have their voices illuminated with memories. They are just memories or nothing less than memories, photos have been sought to illustrate this article, but the owners do not keep any. Of course, there were no cell phones, which is why it was also so special to see every night, with a beer in hand, how Doctor J flew.

2024-05-19 05:09:57
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