Gold men

I see Rudy Fernandez hold his little son in his arms on the stage of Columbus and I understand that Rudy was born to live this moment, this sweet moment of honor and eternity. When he was born in 2016, maybe Rudy Fernández would not imagine that three years later he would have his son Alan on one arm, while holding the World Cup in the other. But life is this, and also the death of his grandfather this summer, during the concentration with the national team; and that his sister, former player Marta Fernández, lost her eight-month-old baby. Rudy Fernández, the Rudy Fernández who won the final against a brave Argentina, who has touched the sky of himself, suffered and assimilated his pain , settled on him, forged on him. He was and is the captain of the Spanish team, he was and is with Marc Gasol the survivor of our other World Cup, in 2006, with the golden generation of Navarro and Pau, and he has taken out his ethical gallons of courage in the open eyes of the players young people, who have grown up seeing him, Marc and the others winning Europeans and hanging Olympic medals with the ease of who gathers the fruits of a harvest that hides his aridity of art and effort. The time had come to be much more than an extraordinary basketball player: the time had come to make his last leap towards the extraordinary man who has always been there , waiting for his revelation.

It was ten years ago, in February 2009, when the boy who was then Rudy Fernandez showed the man inside. He was 23 years old and debuted in the NBA math contest. His team was Portland Trail Blazers: the same in which Fernando Martín debuted in 1986. In the NBA he had hit that mate of Rudy in front of Dwight Howard in the Olympic final between Spain and the US in Beijing in 2008, hanging from the hoop with an explosion pure of boldness and talent to burst its limits, or the athletic limits with which we still loaded the Spaniards in front of the muscular American towers. Maybe that mate who went around the world invited Rudy to the All Star Weekend contest. When his time came - a unique moment, almost like today, with the international cameras on him - Rudy Fernández stripped off his shirt and showed what he was wearing: also from Portland, but with the name of Martin and the number 10, which was Fernando's number. From that moment, his spectacular mate did the same.

It did not matter if he won or not, because he had already won, because in Spain all of us who saw Fernando Martín play at least once, the first Spaniard to debut in the NBA, we would always applaud that tribute , we would always applaud This boy who at his best forgot about himself to remember another, who was also a boy like him and who shone before he was a legend.

That is why we cannot be surprised by his evolution as a player or his performance in the final phase of this World Championship that we now celebrate. He returned to Spain to succeed at Real Madrid. And from being a young explosive player with a great shot of three , athletic as very few, he became one of the most intelligent that can be seen on a track, which enhances the collective game over the individual, which reads the foreign passes as nobody to intercept them and appears in the attack when it is crucially indispensable, to save the ship from shipwreck. Something like Ricky Rubio, a man who is a specialist in making others happy by deploying his game, giving good passes, appearing in attack only when his team requires it, because his thing is to spread joy in the form of basketball. This young man, 28, also suffered a terrible loss three years ago: that of his mother, from cancer. He was about to retire and today, when he has commanded this team to his own peak, he has said that his mother pushes him at every moment, that he feels her there, that he is with him. And, after winning the final, he raised a finger towards the sky of the pavilion, which was the sky of the world and was the sky of gold.

I think of Marc Gasol, questioned on so many occasions, that he has a stream of pure alchemy in his veins every time the ball passes through his hands like trees and knows how to distribute the game as the best base, something like a Sabonis that also pulls three in the moments when his team looks at the infinity of dissatisfaction. Or in Sergio Llull, that kind of mythological hero who broke his knee two years ago and returns to fly in his own sidereal moments, like an Achilles who bandages his heel to return again to the gates of Troy when the ball is a Fireball that melts any basket and breath. Or in the great defender Víctor Claver, born to figure , who knows as nobody that basketball, like all the good things in life, is best played as a team.

Ricky Rubio has said that all this is just sport, and that he hopes that this achievement will inspire people to overcome their difficulties, their problems, their daily losses, their pain of existing. You are at the top and you say that . You remember the others, with their slow hardship. Well, you had already won, like Rudy: you had done it before, because you already had that victory inside, that triumph of valuing life over your circumstances. Like Rudy Fernández, overcoming his duel and leading that team forward. Or like Marc Gasol, who loves his brother Pau and has always had to fight against the long shadow of a comparison that has stigmatized him, until this year he has won everything, including the right to be the same.

These people win and also suffer, or because they know how to suffer and learn from that crack they have ended up winning. Because he has not given up . Because their values ​​are perseverance and strength that is only in union. As the great coach Sergio Scariolo explains, he has shown us what it means to win and live: in not lowering his arms, in moving forward in difficulties and not lowering his arms.

Joaquín Pérez Azaústre is a writer. His most recent novel is Hearts in the Dark (Anagram).

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Spain
• Marc Gasol
• Ricky Rubio
• Sergio Llull
• Real Madrid
• Argentina
• sports

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