Legend Laia Palau, the goodbye of the commander of the women's basketball revolution: "Then everything was precarious"
Laia Palau
stops playing.
"
I'm not retiring
."
She doesn't go.
She stays.
Because the legends, and she is one of the greatest, do not depart, they continue by our side.
Pau Gasol
has done
it, hanging his sneakers in a closet but maintaining his presence in the day-to-day of
national basketball
.
And Laia will do it, with her points and assists kept in a drawer but with her talent and her wisdom explained in every corner of the pavilions of our country.
As usual.
"I don't want to use the word retired because I don't really retire from basketball,
my idyll with this sport doesn't end here
. I stop playing, but I will continue working in this world," he explained at a press conference.
His last club was
Spar Girona
, the final point of a list full of successes:
Universitari de Barcelona, French Bourges, Ros Casares, Polish Polkowice, USK Prague from the Czech Republic, Jayco Rangers from Australia, Bourges again
and finally the Girona.
With them,
seven leagues
and five cups in Spain,
two leagues
and three cups in France, one league and one cup in Poland,
four
leagues and two cups in the Czech Republic... And
two Euroleagues
, the icing on the cake.
One with the Ros Casares and another with the Prague.
But Laia's great team,
her
team,
her
family, has been the
Spanish team
.
There he has made history, even more, he has won, even more, he has triumphed, even more, and he has reigned in Europe and in the world, even more.
Palau has lived it and has played it all.
Absolutely everything.
So much so that he reached
300 games
(314 in total) and received a tribute in the middle of the match against Belgium.
Even her rivals surrendered to her.
The origin in 2003 and the glory in Rio
Laia was part of the
spark of the 2003 European Championship
in which Spain took bronze, repeated metal in
2005
and touched silver in 2007. Three summers in which the national team already played face to face against the best on the continent with Palau at the helm.
Gold, impossible at another time, was a matter of time.
In
2009
the European bronze was hung again and in 2010 the World Cup, a work for the history books of Spanish basketball, but not the ceiling.
Spanish basketball overcame the small post-World Cup bump and started seven summers in which Palau did not get off the podium: gold, finally, in the
2013 European Championship
, silver in the 2014 World Cup, bronze in the 2015 European Championship,
silver in the Rio Games
, gold at the 2017 European Championship, bronze at the 2018 World Cup and gold, the last one, at the 2019 European Championship. Seven summers for a life.
"Life has given me a tremendous career.
My life has been exciting in this world
. I am very fond of the love that people have given me. We have to thank life for the things that happen," he reflected before the media.
Olympic gold is her great legacy, an almost unrepeatable feat, but what remains of Palau is the honesty and camaraderie of two decades of talent.
"
This sport has been my life, it is my life and it looks like it will continue to be my life
. I don't leave the pavilion."
"This is going to give," he said when he left the selection.
And what she has brought to women's basketball is an
unprecedented
revolution .
12 medals
that do not envy those of the men's squad, also eternal after 20 years that are the zenith of basketball in Spain, and something much more important than metals: "
We have put ourselves on the map
".
Palau stops playing the sport that has the most licenses among women, more than 120,000 (for the 80,000 of soccer), to a league that is broadcast on television and on all platforms, in a team that has 15 rivals in its competition ( when it started, in 1997, there were 12).
At his side, his blood family: "I am very grateful to my parents, who are here with me for another day, accompanying me on this adventure.
If it had not been for them, I would not have been able to get here. They are also retiring today
And they're a little sad."
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