"My life is a joke and joy," Lucas Nogueira (São Gonçalo, Brazil, 1992) told this newspaper seven years ago, a boy who did not have a sense of heaven, a diamond that would never be polished.

Infinite, like his smile, like his tangled hair, like the tattoos that cover even his fingers and face.

A 'Giant Baby', as he was baptized by a family friend in his native Brazil, then a promise of genius in Madrid, today a broken toy after his unsuccessful stint in the NBA;

the other side of the sport,

prematurely retired at 28

.

Nogueira announced it on Wednesday, through a letter on his social networks in which he revealed "the sad moments" that took him off the courts.

The injuries that were the last straw, but also the frustrations of a boy whose enthusiasm always pushed him out of focus.

Landed at the age of 15 in the Estudiantes quarry

, in 2014 he made the leap to the Raptors, where after four seasons of disappointment he ended up leaving through the back door, back to the ACB with Fuenlabrada, again the sporting failure, a visit to Bahrain, back to Brazil (Fortaleza Basquete Cearense) and goodbye to the baskets when it should be in full swing.

Lucas then, who everyone called Baby, told that one day the police stopped him when he was walking through the El Viso neighborhood.

A

racist episode

to which he did not even attach much importance, as he did almost everything in those auspicious youth.

«I live here next to Serrano and they saw me a little suspicious.

I did not have my ID.

I explained that I play in Students and they did not believe it.

They told me they had never seen me on TV.

I replied that either they would take me to the police station or they would take me to train, that I was late to Magariños.

In the end they let me go.

At that time, with his 213 centimeters (230 wingspan), he was crying out for opportunities in the Estu, where he would end up exploding with Txus Vidorreta, despite the fact that he always had suspicions of the lack of maturity and concentration, with his mind set on across the pond since he shone at the 2011 Nike Hoops Summit.

Saudade

There was not a day that in the stands of Magariños there were not a handful of NBA scouts following their evolution.

And he, the adopted son of a famous Brazilian soccer player, had spent his first year in Madrid crying.

"It was fatal, very hard," he

recalled of that 'saudade'.

Later, when his knees were beginning to give him headaches - he went to the US for two months in the middle of the season for treatment - it was the Madrid night that dazzled him.

“Everybody goes out for a while and drinks, but I did it over and over and there was no one to hit the brakes.

I've been out a lot.

In Spain I had one game a week.

He was young and had some money and no limits.

In the end you found a way to party.

He had no work ethic.

When I went to the US I saw that a 15-year-old boy had more discipline than me.

It is something cultural ", he later acknowledged on ESPN:" I am not a victim, I am a sincere boy who has always taken responsibility for what he has done.

I should have had more opportunities, but maybe I didn't deserve them.

In the 2013 draft, he had been selected

16th by the Hawks

and spent months waiting for news from Atlanta.

It was finally in 2014 when the Raptors, where his rights were already, took him, the third schoolboy to make the jump to the NBA after Sergio Rodríguez and Fernando Martín, leaving 600,000 euros in cash for the needy coffers of Estudiantes, where he had one more year of contract.

In Toronto, four long seasons, 141 games.

None of what he dreamed of.

When he returned to the Endesa League, he

worked with the psychologist José Manuel Beirán

.

But it was not the springboard he expected to return to the NBA (just nine games).

At last, the giant baby Nogueira gave up pursuing his dream.

Now, her daughter Estella, who lives with her mother in Florida, occupies her thoughts more than baskets.

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Know more

  • Brazil

  • Madrid

  • U.S

  • Spain

  • Bahrain

  • Fuenlabrada

  • sports

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