Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 9:00 am  |  20 responses

Pau Gasol Keeps Winning Championships

The Spaniard led his country to the very top of Euro hoops. It’s a first for Spain: “Pau Gasol had 18 points and 11 rebounds to lead world champion Spain to an 85-63 win over Serbia in the final of the European basketball championship Sunday at Katowice, Poland. The victory gave Spain its first European title after six runner-up finishes, including a one-point loss two years ago to Russia in front of its home crowd … Gasol, the Lakers’ star forward, scored down low and blocked three shots on his way to winning tournament most-valuable-player honors.”

  • Add a Comment
  • Share
  • RSS

Tags: , ,

  • Ken

    Guess that finger injury is healing well then.

  • al

    Not an awesome info though.
    Spain won quarterfinals, semis and final by, at least, 18 points. For real, all the games were done at halftime.
    Starting 5 in Spain was Ricky playing the point, putting a lot of pressure in opposite point guards and besides a low start in the championship he outperformed Tony Parker, Spanoulis and, the best PG in the tournament, Teodosic. At 2 Juan Carlos Navarro, former Grizzly, was terrific in scoring from every angle, Rudy Fernandez had to play the 3 which he did pretty well, being able to rebound, defend and score fluently. The PF was for Garbajosa, a former Raptor, but Felipe Reyes played more minutes, completely opposite players but very complementary. The C was for Pau which was the best player in Poland. His bro Marc Gasol, also a Grizzly, had good backup minutes.
    Together with this 7 players, Raul Lopez former Jazz player, and Carlos Cabezas shared the backup PG, and Mumbru, Llull (drafted by Nuggets this year) and Claver (drafted by Portland this year) had limited minutes.

    appart from Spain, a very young and talented Serbian team won silver lead by PG Teodosic, and always competitive Greece reached bronze with good games by Spanoulis and Schorchianitis.
    Slovenia finished 4th, great tournament from Erazem Lorbek.
    Tony Parker played good and lead France to a 8-1 tournament, but was very weak (or very well stopped) in quarterfinals against Spain, so France could only finish 5th

  • johnmac2147

    2nd Congrats to them

  • boy sanchez

    Yeah Spain has a great team… Even though I’m Greek and they nailed us in semifinals and I should hate them for this, I have to admit it. Spain has a GREAT team.

  • boy sanchez

    Spain has a great team. Even though I’m from Greece and they kicked our @ss at the semifinals and I should hate them for that by now, I have to admit it. Spain has such a GREAT team.

  • dial up

    Seriously, when people who don’t know basketball say Ricky Rubio outperformed tony parker i take them lightly. You clearly didn’t watch the game, as Rubio had 4 turnovers to go with his 4 assists. While Rudy Fernandez was the defensive juggernaut stealing the ball 6 times, Rubio actually put in mediocre performances throughout eurobasket. He played like a backup pg.

  • Meirengos

    Rubio had 8pts (3/4FG), 4reb, 4as, 2st and 3to in 24 minutes against France. Meanwhile, Parker had 6pts (1/8FG), 1reb, 3as and 3to in 32 minutes against Spain. So Rubio did outperform Parker, at least in that game.
    Spanoulis and Teodosic had also bad games against Spain mainly because of the defense performed by Rubio, though the two other Spanish guards -Cabezas and Raül López- did also well on those two games.

  • Meirengos

    Actually Rubio had 4 assists vs France, as dial up posted.

  • Meirengos

    I meant 4 turnovers, sorry…

  • Sparker

    where was calderon?

  • more than stats

    Ricky outperformed Tony Parker. Basketball is not baseball, I mean, you can’t try to guess what happened in a game just with the stats.

    Basketball is more than stats, and Ricky made Tony Parker look like a mediocre PG with his impressive defence and intensity. Besides that, Ricky set the tempo of the game all the time. It was a great performance.

  • boy sanchez

    @Sparker…..: I think Calderon was injured but I’m not pretty sure.

  • la huey

    I don’t think its fair to compare Rubio’s performance to that of Parker’s. Spain was geared toward stopping Parker by having their guards funnel Parker into help defenders who could leave the French shooters and their broke 3pt shooting. Ricky Rubio was not the primary, secondary, or even tertiary concern of Team France.

  • http://www.lkz.ch Darksaber

    A year ago i would have been cussing out Pau Gasol, but i’ve grudgingly begun to accept his Game and heart (though he’s still a whiny punk most of the time oncourt). So i guess i’ll have to find another player on the utterly annoying spanish side to pour my haterade on. Lucky they still have RUUUUUDY!!! Eff him.
    Oh and Spain is seriously strong at the moment, after losing their opener in Eurobasket, they rolled off one of the most incredible performances i’ve seen in European B-ball starting at the Quarterfinals. Beating France, Greece and the young Serbs by at least 18+ in each game!! Unheard of. That’s dominance. Plus i like their coach, he was coaching Khimki Moscow last year, the most exciting team to watch in Eurocup.

  • COLT6

    Hey, Sofo balled pretty good in the bronze medal game against Slovenia. Although I still don’t think he can think but I give credit where it is due. Props Big Fella. It aint gold but… oh wait, Gasol nailed yo ass in the semis, right? Haha!

  • boy sanchez

    What’s your point COLT6?

  • http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ SOFOKLIS SCHORTSIANITIS(down to…. 150 kg!!!)

    @boy sanchez…: gam…se tona more,kobleksikos slovenos einai.min asxoleisai.

  • boy sanchez

    @Sofo: Exeis dikio re! Den aksizei. Apo pou eisai re sy?

  • al

    Dial up, I am so glad I did not have to answer myself. I can see several people in fact watched the games here. It was a nice tournament, specially for Spain.

  • al

    by the way, if you read l’equipe, the french sport newspaper after that game, there was an interview with tony Parker, and the second question was, don’t you think Ricky played better than you yesterday? he did not answer directly.

    Besides that, I already wrote Parker has played a very good tournament and Teodosic was the best PG in Poland

Advertisement