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Pau Gasol poses for a photograph with the Larry O’Brien Trophy during media day Sept. 25, 2010, in El Segundo, California. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will formally welcome its Class of 2023 on Saturday. This week, Yahoo Sports is highlighting notable names in this class, leading up to the big ceremony.
Perhaps the longest-lasting legacy of the Dream Team is how their performance spread the gospel of the game to a generation of kids outside the United States. One of them was an 11-year-old who came up playing in the shadow of the Sagrada Familia.
Pau Gasol had grown up with the game; both of his parents played. When the Dream Team came to Barcelona, though? That’s when he fell in love with it.
It wasn’t because he wanted to emulate the rim-rattling dominance of the NBA’s greatest physical marvels. It was because of how artfully they all worked together. Because, as he’d tell Sports Illustrated’s Lee Jenkins, “I like beautiful things.”
And man, did he play like it.
Arguably “the most unappreciated great player of his generation” will get his due on Saturday, when Gasol is inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He’ll be enshrined as part of a class featuring Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki and Tony Parker, as well as Gregg Popovich and Becky Hammon, for whom Gasol played during a late-career stint with the Spurs.
He’ll also join the late Kobe Bryant, with whom he teamed on Lakers squads that won back-to-back NBA championships. The pair forged a bond that extended far beyond the court, with Gasol helping the legendarily obsessive Bryant access aspects of himself besides that “Mamba Mentality.”
“I’m more naturally inclined to show my softness from a personal level and an emotional level, and I think that’s something maybe I influenced him to in a way,” Gasol once told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. “I’d say, ‘It’s OK to be normal or act kind and vulnerable or soft at times. We don’t have to be so hard all the time.'”
Ah, that word. “Softness.” The bane of every European player’s existence — and a particular pain for…
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Publish date : 2023-08-10 17:16:13
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