40-year-old Pau Gasol at the Final Four: The Eternal

Enlarge image

Pau Gasol in a duel with the 13 years younger Bayern professional Jalen Reynolds

Photo:

Enric Fontcuberta / EPA

Just change in a Pau Gasol: That is of course not as bad as a European basketball team. That brought FC Barcelona to Cologne. When it was all or nothing in the decisive fifth quarter-final match of the Euroliga against Zenit Saint Petersburg, he came off the bench early and stayed on the floor until the matter was settled. He managed four blocks alone, the most spectacular defensive action in basketball when the defender is in the air and time seems to stand still.

As with him.

The Final Four from this Friday (semifinals) to Sunday (finals) in Cologne will experience a legend.

One of these insatiable Spaniards from the league of tennis star Rafael Nadal, who will play for his 14th win in Roland Garros from Sunday at the age of 34, or Fernando Alonso, who is still racing in Formula 1 at 39, albeit more badly than right.

Gasol is even a year older, and he will soon be 41.

In his career he has won almost everything double and triple.

With the Los Angeles Lakers, the NBA, in which he scored 22,992 points in 1362 games, became a six-time all-star and shares the podium of historical greats from Europe with Dirk Nowitzki and Tony Parker.

With the Spanish national team, which mostly plays with his younger brother Marc, the World and European Championships.

"I want to help win the Euroliga, the one title I miss"

The fact that Gasol could now, 21 years after his first, only and unsuccessful participation in a Final Four with his youth club Barcelona, ​​also triumph in the premium club tournament of the old continent, spans a huge arc.

"I want to help win the Euroliga, the one title I miss," he said when he was introduced.

But something else means even more to him: that he is playing again at all.

Gasol speaks of "a dream come true," after a complicated foot injury earned him two operations and a two-year break from playing.

He had to stay away from the halls since spring 2019, when he had just moved from San Antonio to Milwaukee.

Later he couldn't even make his debut for the Portland Trail Blazers.

Odyssey and Martyrdom.

But basketball, Gasol thought, had given him too much to end like that.

And so, after 20 years in the USA, he moved to Barcelona with his wife and daughter to play for a good 28,000 euros.

That is the percentage of the minimum seasonal wage stipulated by the Spanish league - he did not ask for it and certainly not necessary.

In his career he has earned around 180 million.

In February he agreed to return.

He started team training in March and played his first game in April.

And then in May, the gala in the decisive match against Saint Petersburg, after which he was named MVP of the evening.

"Bringing a pinch of quality and difference in certain moments," he formulated on his return as a claim to himself. Today against Olimpia Milan all sorts of these moments are likely to come again;

there is hardly such a close, open tournament as a final four of the Euroliga.

Since the preliminary round has been played on a single track (2016/2017), the first has always failed in the semifinals.

Barça was first this year.

When Gasol doesn't deliver, he sits outside

In the nervous atmosphere it is not about showing for an old star, and something like Šarūnas Jasikevičius does not even come to mind. To describe Barça's coach as ultra-competitive would be an understatement, during the matches this Lithuanian bear roars, even without an audience, as if he had to yell at 20,000 fans. »Saras« is also a legend, as a development player he won the Euroleague four times, more often than anyone else. He led Barcelona to the club's first title in 2003. He has internalized the tough European basketball, and he coaches just as aggressively. When Gasol needs to be corrected, he does it at the same volume as the others. And if he doesn't perform at its best today, he'll sit outside like the others.

No one could have been sure whether that would work with the comeback, says Jasikevičius.

To join a well-rehearsed team after a two-year break in the middle of the season.

At the beginning, Gasol also noted the uncertainty.

But then he "got better every day and every week."

The coach has been friends with Gasol since Barça played together for a year.

At least one thing he knew for sure: there would be no human risk.

Gasol, who originally wanted to follow the example of his mother, a doctor, and began studying medicine, has never been a guy for airs despite his prominent role in Spanish basketball. He has integrated into every team, whether at the Lakers, where he became friends with Kobe Bryant so closely that he gave his own daughter this middle name in memory of his daughter Gianna (Bryant's widow Vanessa is her godmother) in memory of his daughter Gianna. Or now back in Barcelona, ​​where he immediately boosted jersey sales, but holds back in the media. Just don't give the impression that he's the star of a team that has done most of the season without him.

But it will also gain more conviction in Cologne just because of its presence. Like that of the Spaniards at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, his last big goal and the other title he is still missing. And after that, next season? "Come what comes," says Pau Gasol, a 40-year-old with well over 1,500 career games, who has loved his sport even more since he believed it was lost to himself.