He is only 30 years old and has sometimes been tempted to lie about his age so that his career is not doubted. Fran de Albaand Puerto Rican physical therapist, has, despite his youth, an impressive professional background behind him. His professional career, which has now led him to become the physiotherapist and sports coach at the African branch of the NBA Academy, began in a hospital in Sanlúcar. There he ended up when he finished his studies at the Cadiz University. However, he was always clear that he wanted to direct his work to the sports field and, especially, to high performance and the sports elite.
“Sport has always been my thing”, says the Puerto Rican who completed his training with a master’s degree in Osteopathy and another of Sports physiotherapy. “Perhaps I have dreamed very high, but my goal has always been, and continues to bework in the NBA”. And although the employment contract that he signed more than a year ago appears on the letterhead of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the goal is to work for one of the teams in the American league. “I feel like I’m on the right track,” he says.
His passion for this sport and this league was born when he was just 16 years old. “I got a scholarship to study a few months in the United States and the family I lived with was very fond of it. It didn’t catch my attention because I went with the football chip, which is what I was used to in Spain. But I immediately got hooked and when I came back I didn’t think about anything else”, he recalls.
Before reaching the NBA Academy, Fran de Alba has traveled much of the world. His first contact with high-performance sports was when he was only 23 years old. He started with Teruel Volleyball Clubone of the main teams in the competition in Spain, where he says he lived “each season as if they were five years of experience because it is a team from which much is expected and they asked me for excellence from the beginning”.
Although he was happy, he did not abandon his goal, and before the end of the third season he made the international leap. He packed his bags and left a China to work with him olympic track cycling team, another novelty in his career. From there she went to work directly for him. chinese olympic committeewhere he worked with a multitude of athletes from different sports, and, later, he was recruited for the so-called Team Chinawho led “From one month to the next I saw myself in charge of a project with a hundred elite physiotherapists and for a year I learned a lot. I think that was the high of my careerjust 26 years old.
That dream ended when the Chinese government decided to stop the project. “There I stayed without knowing what to do, because my goal was then the Tokyo Olympics 2020. But they offered me a new adventure that I had never expected: to work in a Russian ice hockey team”.
Although the differences are evident, Fran de Alba says that this was what brought him closer to the NBA competition format. “Many games in a very short time: 72 games a year.” In this case, the pandemic was what ended his work.
Back in Spain, he began to work with the beautiful game for the first time. “I started in the Football club Fuenlabrada, in the second division, but football is not my thing. After two months I understood that it was not my future. It is true that the league is beautiful, but physiotherapy in the soccer league is not as overcooked as in other sports. I know that this is going to change, but I did not want to wait for that”.
Thus, in December 2020, one morning when he woke up sleepy after spending much of the night watching NBA basketball games, he found the opportunity he was waiting for. He knew that the NBA Academy was looking for a physical therapist for its African headquarters in Senegal. So he began to apply in a process that was not easy. Months of interviews along with a hundred applicants. “It has been the toughest selection process I have ever had”, acknowledges the Cadiz.
But he succeeded and in June of last year he packed his bags and left for Senegal. The NBA Academy project is organized by the NBA, it is international and it started in 2017/2018. Have headquarters in Mexico, Senegal, India, China and Australia. At the African headquarters, Fran is the head of the rehabilitation area. The Puerto Rican explains that the academy goes to the 20 best players on the African continent. “For a year they receive training and train a lot with the goal of reaching the NBA, the best league in the world,” he clarifies.
They are boys from 16 and 18 years old that have a higher motivation than the rest of the academies in the world. “Their opportunities are very scarce, because many of them come from countries with very limited resources, and for them the simple fact of being in the Academy is a very important achievement”.
About 10% of players make the move to the NBA, but Fran believes that this is going to grow a lot because the project is still very new. “This year we have played, just three weeks ago, the Academy Games in Atlanta and we have been champions of all the academies. Many NBA scouts were there and have set their sights on the African academy, so the percentage is going to continue to grow.”
That makes Fran continue betting on this project, but it is already clear that he wants to cross the pond to become the physiotherapist of one of the main teams in the American league. “I have been lucky enough to contact NBA players, former players and coaches, and although my project in Africa will last one or two years plusI want to take the final leap. I am clear that I am going to reach the NBA league. I’m not going to stop. I don’t care if it’s 20 years from now, but I’ll get there”, he assures.
