Rio de Janeiro: Spaniards settled for second best to US NBA stars at the past two Olympics, but Pau Gasol and his teammates hope their third upset attempt is charmed.
Outside of the American dozen of NBA standouts, a record 34 NBA players are on other Olympics rivals, five more than in 2012. Apart from Team USA, Spain offers the most NBA experience at the Rio Olympics with seven active players and three former NBA players in the lineup. Australia, France and Brazil each boast five NBA players.
Argentina has four and only two teams in Rio, China and Venezuela, lack any active NBA talent — a testimony to the impact of the original 1992 US Olympic “Dream Team.”
“Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, David Robinson — all those guys had so much fun and that’s what you envision when you see the Olympics,” said US Olympian Kyle Lowry.
“A lot of people say, ‘The reason I started playing basketball was because of the Dream Team’. So I hope that in 20 years some teams will have seen us play in 2016 and that made them play basketball.”
Former NBA player Juan Carlos Navarro makes his fifth Olympic appearance for Spain while former NBAer Rudy Fernandez and current Laker Jose Calderon and Gasol play in their fourth Olympics.
Other Spanish NBA talent includes Oklahoma City’s Alex Abrines, New York’s Guillermo Hernangomez, Chicago’s Nikola Mirotic, Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio and Philadelphia’s Sergio Rodriguez.
Spain would love nothing more than to dethrone the US squad for Olympic gold, having lost the 2008 Beijing final 118-107 and the 2012 London final 107-100.
“It would mean the world,” said 36-year-old center Gasol, a two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers who now plays for the San Antonio Spurs. “But it’s extremely hard. That’s why it would mean so much.”
Spain begins Group B play Sunday against Croatia. Other preliminary round openers in Spain’s group find Argentina against Nigeria and host Brazil facing Lithuania.
“We have to do a lot of things right,” Gasol said. “We have to work to beat a lot of great teams to have a chance to get there, so we’ve got to grow as the tournament advances and deserve to get there.”
