Mission accomplished after another ordeal . The original of this Spain-Italy has been that at last the contributions of the so-called leaders of his NBA fame and those of the most modest players have been matched - including the Hernangómez brothers , who are out of the rotations in their North American league teams - who complete the selection. Now, have they matched up or down? After seeing the unfortunate performance of Marc Gasol and the many mistakes of Ricky Rubio (seven turnovers!), One would say rather down. With Juancho Hernangómez as a figure. And still, victory. Miraculous everything, one would say.

The Spain-Italy parties are not usually artistic monuments, and see that these two countries represent summits of art. In basketball it is a dog's face, or with blood, sweat and tears , and all the clichés that occur to them. Normally it is Italy that pushes and grabs technically and athletic superior Spanish teams, but the beginning of this Friday's meeting was quite the opposite: a tangled, brusque Spanish team that for the first time in the championship discovered the limitations of its two NBA, Gasol and Rubio figures.

It is complicated, as we have said, to be a good complementary player in the NBA and to be projected to be a decisive superfigure in FIBA ​​basketball, in this case due to the needs of the script in a team that is not too balanced or expert. And for the first time in this championship, Gasol and Rubio were very mediocre at the same time, at the start of the game, forcing actions that ended badly. Only the exit to the field of the second unit, with Sergio Llull at the head, balanced things after the catastrophic start and maintained equality until the break. And so on until the final small arreón.

Absences such as those of Sergio Rodríguez, Pau Gasol , the retired Juan Carlos Navarro and the nationalized do not compensate overnight, and this 2019 team does it by force of deaf fighting and without excess of clairvoyance . We will see how far they can go, although the quarterfinals are already guaranteed. Perhaps having taken off that weight serves to free them and develop a more fluid and incisive game against the terrible Serbia .

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  • sports
  • Spanish Basketball Team
  • basketball
  • Marc Gasol
  • Basketball World Cup 2019
  • Ricky Rubio

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