Pau Gasol is a basketball player for the San Antonio Spurs and Spain. During his career, he won many awards, including medals at the Olympic Games, World and European Championships.
Biographical data
Pau Gasol was born in July 1980 in the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona. While still a schoolboy, he began to study in the basketball section. Over time, this occupation developed into a brilliant sports career, not only for Pau, but also for his younger brother Mark, who also plays for the Spanish national team.
Already at the age of sixteen, Gasol began to play for Barcelona, one of the youth teams. Two years later, he won the prestigious youth tournament. The magnificent game and the impressive growth of Pau Gasol (213 cm) attracted attention from the coaches of the main Catalan team.
Careers in Spain
After transferring Gasol to Barcelona's main squad in 1998, he had to sit on the bench for a whole year. Over the entire season, he played a little more than 10 minutes in total. But already in the next championship, Pau Gasol spent at least 15 minutes on the court per game.
That season, he became the owner of the first prestigious trophy in his career - the Spanish Cup, and the coaching staff began to bet on a young, but very talented and promising center.
In the third season at Barcelona, Pau Gasol became one of the team leaders. He spent most of the playing time on the court, gaining an average of 11 points per meeting and making 5 rebounds. The 20-year-old center became the champion of Spain and was recognized as the most valuable player in the Cup of the country.
Moving overseas
In 2001, Pau Gasol in the NBA draft was selected by the Atlanta Hawks club. However, playing the Spanish center as part of the “Hawks” never happened, because he was immediately sold to another team - “Memphis Grizzlies”. As the basketball player himself later admitted, he was then very lucky.
Already in the first season for himself in the new team, Gasol quickly won a place in the starting five. In the regular season, he played 82 matches with impressive performance: on average, he scored 17.6 points per match and made 8.9 rebounds. Thanks to these results, Pau Gasol was recognized as the “Rookie of the Year” in the NBA.
Two years later, the Spanish basketball player took part in the playoff series for the first time. Unfortunately, the Grizzlies flew in the first round, losing to the San Antonio Spurs.
In the 2005/2006 season, Pau Gasol became the best in his team on rebounds. Then he first played in the NBA All-Star Game. However, Gasol wanted to play in one of the best teams, so in 2008 he moved to the famous “Los Angeles Lakers”.
As part of the new team, Pau changed his playing role, having retrained from center to heavy forward. Quickly adapting to the new team, Gasol set about his favorite job: he began to throw a lot of goals and make a large number of rebounds both near his own and near someone else's basket.
In the 2008/2009 season, he again took part in the NBA All-Star Game, and also tried on the championship ring of the National Basketball League. A year later, Pau repeated this achievement. As part of the Lakers, Gasol played until 2014.
In July, the Spanish basketball player, as a free agent, moved to the Chicago Bulls. As part of the “Bulls”, he overcame the line of 1000 fights in the NBA. For the two seasons spent on this team, Pau Gasol was called up twice for the NBA All-Star Game.
In July 2016, the Spanish heavy forward signed a two-year contract with San Antonio Spurs. As part of “Spur”, he set a new achievement - he scored 20, 000 points, while becoming the second player from Europe who managed to do this.
