A few years back – no doubt – it was the biggest dream any person that touched a basketball had. Like Ronny Turiaf who tells us about this in an interview with hoopsaddict:
HA: As a young kid growing up in France, what is the common perception that people have of the NBA?
RT: It’s the best league in the world, the best athletes. It’s a league of superstars. Everybody dreams about meeting those guys, talking to those guys and being like those guys. So yeah, I think superstardom.
According to Spain’s national head coach Pepu Hernandez things might change.
“At the moment there is a very strong commitment from our NBA players to the national side but I understand that might change and they may come to feel that a career in the NBA is incompatible with playing for Spain.”
Why is that? Well, we all know that the 80 games in the NBA are very demanding and even some US stars prefer to spend their holidays on an Caribbean island with their wife or girlfriend than working hard for the national team, same goes for Europeans or any other country.
But for Spanish players like Jose Manuel Calderon (Toronto Raptors), Jorge Garbajosa (Toronto Raptors) Pau Gasol )Los Angeles Lakers) Juan Carlos Navarro (Memphis Grizzlies) and Sergio Rodriguez (Portland Trail Blazers) there might be more that than which is very interesting. PRIDE!
“The great thing about these players is that they really want to play for Spain, there is a great atmosphere in the squad and they are all friends.
No doubt, the money you can make in the NBA right now is attracting European players but I doubt that playing 80 regular season games still makes it so special for them to be on a basketball court as if they would be on a European court.
