"Now that I'm older, I like to tell memories. I was the one who matched up with Pete Mickeal in every workout. In attack he hit me. In defense he also hit me. Imagine what that was. But I didn't back down, and He also gave him. Every day. After winning the Euroleague in Paris, Pete came and told me: 'Roger, all the battles we have had have served for this.' It is one of the best memories I have as a player. "

The glory in sport must be deciphered from the moments when the spotlights point elsewhere. Roger Grimau (Barcelona, ​​1978), captain of the team that conquered the second, and for now the last, Euroleague in the history of the Barça club, goes to the suffering of training. Víctor Sada (Badalona, ​​1984), unexpected protagonist of what would be the game of his life, captures in memory all those nights in which, together with Ricky Rubio and Jordi Trias, he convinced the rest to finish the night together. Whether it was to see Guardiola's Barça, or to play poker. " All in! " They shouted before the games. And Xavi Pascual (Gavà, 1972), the coach who conquered 19 titles at Barcelona -they all keep the trophies and a framed photo-, shifts his gaze to work.At all those hours invested to profile its more than 100 attack systems. "It is part of my philosophy to always cross the mental limit . " The coach conquered the great continental scepter at only 37 years old.

All of them recall for EL MUNDO a unique moment in its future. The one that had the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy as its final stage on May 9, 2010, the day that Barcelona defeated an old enemy like Olympiacos (86-68) in the final, its executioner in the 1997 final of Berlin . With David Rivers disguised as Charon.

Five determining signings

"In the summer of 2009, after my first full season as coach of Barcelona and winning the League, we had no choice but to react very quickly. Ilyasova and David Andersen suddenly left, and Daniel Santiago was in the final stretch of his career . The signings we had been working on for a long time ended well. "

Pascual discovered it soon: "I have seen many incredible things in my life. To Navarro, to Calathes ... But Ricky Rubio had an unparalleled learning speed. With a single glance he already knew everything, he already learned everything . He also arrived Mickeal A warrior My warrior The best player I have ever coached in his position We brought Boniface Ndong along with Erazem Lorbek and Terence Morris We signed very well The combination of new players with in-house players like Sada, Grimau and Trias, plus those who were already there, such as Basile, Fran Vázquez, Lakovic or even Barton, despite spending the season injured, allowed a very solid dressing room.It was a team at the level of the best in the history of the Euroleague ", affirms with conviction Pascual, who outlined that template with Joan Creus.

" We were like a roller. The initial five came out, the sixth man, the seventh, the eighth ... And no one backed down . We put the defensive level very high [that Barça fitted an average of 65 points per game, but also scored 80] Ricky started defending all over the court and set the pace for the rest ", Grimau returns. "I managed to take the team to the limit of its possibilities," confesses Pascual.

The twin towers

" The differential aspect of that time, beyond Navarro, was the pair formed by Fran Vázquez and Ndong [the Twin Towers , nicknamed them Pete Mickeal]. They allowed them to play above the basket. They had a good hand. In defense they were a guarantee ... And they were never wrong. That made the rest of us squeeze much more. And that we could play basketball that was very different and modern compared to what was being played, "believes Sada.

That Barcelona, ​​however, fell against Baskonia in the final of the ACB (0-3), bordered on excellence throughout the season . Conquered the Cup final against Real Madrid. And in Europe he only lost one match in the regular phase, against Partizan in Belgrade (67-66). "And because someone swept a ball out of time," warns Grimau.

Navarro's redemption against Madrid

The second and last fall came already in the quarterfinals of the tournament, in the second playoff game against Madrid. Before Tomic it had been just over three months since he had signed for the white club. He was 23 years old. He scored 22 points at the Palau in what was his first great game in Europe. And the Barça team, with 1-1 in the series after losing the field factor, had to go to stake their lives at Vistalegre. The answer had Juan Carlos Navarro. Nervous and not understanding what was happening to him. He had missed his last 10 triples .

"That coincided with a slump in Navarro. He was our most important player, the one who made the differences. And he was not quite fine in the success, not in the decisions. We noticed it a lot," recalls Pascual. Navarro could barely sleep before the dispute of the third match against Real Madrid . "There was tension. Nerves. But we were a team with an incredible desire to win," says Sada. "Juan Carlos was our leader. And we kept trusting him blindly," ditch Grimau.

And Navarro broke free. He scored 45 points and eight triples in Barcelona's two consecutive wins against the team then coached by Ettore Messina . And he reached the Final Four, where the escort would be proclaimed MVP thanks to his 21 points in the final match against Olympiacos.

That Vrankovic plug

The Barcelona players tried to avoid the demons of historical emergencies. Grimau looks back: "When I arrived in Paris, I had in my head, even if it was in a little hole, that there I had played the final of the stopper, or non-stopper, from Vrankovic to Montero in 1996. I am a culé for my family. And I had also lived all those finals against Jugoplastika of the generation of Epi, Solozábal, Norris as a child ... I was sad that they could not win a European Cup. They were traumatic games for fans like me. They beat us. to win".

The match against CSKA opened the 2010 Final Four. A year earlier, the Muscovites had defeated Barcelona in the Berlin semifinals. But Xavi Pascual's men did not stumble on the same stone again (64-54) and prepared to face a rival they had not encountered all season, Olympiacos. There played the highest-paid basketball player in Europe, Josh Childress, who had come from the Atlanta Hawks . But, above all, ogres like Papaloukas, Teodosic, Kleiza, and a fearsome battery of interiors, with Vujcic, Bourousis and, especially, that human mass known as Baby Shaq , Sofoklis Schortsanitis.

"It was as if he were levitating"

Emotions overflowed before the duel even started. The players watched a video in which their relatives reminded them of how much they had worked to get there. Although nothing like the first step on the parquet. "Even when I tell it, it gives me goose bumps. After the talk, we went out to do the warm-up wheel. We did it by the side of the field where our audience was [sighs]. It was an incredible feeling. He told me: ' We are here. This is the day. We cannot fail. We will not fail. "[Grimau stops for a few seconds, takes a breath and continues] At that moment, my eyes got wet. I don't even know how I made the wheel. It was as if he were levitating. I have never experienced that feeling in my life . "

Pascual, who always prepared the matches based on the rival's weapons, hatched one of his greatest masterpieces as a coach against Panagiotis Giannakis. "I remember one of the slogans. When we had the ball inside Schortsanitis, our four abandoned his man and went behind to put a stopper on him." Baby Shaq took three, where one of them was Fran Vázquez, who ended the night with four caps .

Sada and the commission of a life

But it was Víctor Sada who received the commission of his life. He hadn't played a single minute in the semifinals. Little did it matter. " After the semifinal I spoke with Pascual. He told me that he had in mind that I defend Papaloukas. That I could do well. That I could bother him. I prepared myself a lot for a day and a half . And yes, I was the first change in the final. I changed the rhythm in the blocks. I pressed him all over the court. Also, I made him tired because that day I was especially successful in attack. "

It was the day that Sada found the nirvana that every athlete dreams of. In his case, after scoring a triple against Papaloukas in the third quarter, which cut Olympiacos' comeback threat. " Like Iniesta's goal. Like Messi and his header in the final in Rome. The sensation I had with the triple was that . It was a play for Navarro, but he missed the ball. I caught it with five seconds to go. he asked, but I made a feint, a boat to the right, and two seconds after the end of possession I threw. He went inside. The description does not end there: "But just before hitting that triple, I took a shot from Childress that was already almost inside the basket. I removed two points, and made three more." The party could already conclude.

With one minute and 23 seconds to go, Xavi Pascual brought Trias and Lakovic on the track for the first time. Sada walked to the bank. "I saw my hobby. My colleagues. I had always dreamed of something like that. I sat down and cried . "

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