Marc Gasol has had a truly remarkable few months so we’re taking a look at the career that led up to it and how it honestly couldn’t have happened to a better person
If at the beginning of the 2018-19 NBA regular season you had told me that the Toronto Raptors would be NBA Champions, I would have said, “Yeah they are!”. If you had told me that Marc Gasol would be a pivotal cog in that championship team? I would have been more than a little bit skeptical.
Yet here we are.
Gasol is indeed and NBA champion. And even more remarkably, he’s an NBA champion and a FIBA World Cup gold medalist in a matter of only a few months. In attaining these two titles in the same year, Gasol is joining a pretty exclusive club.
Lamar Odom is the only player before Gasol to ever double up in that way in the same year. Gasol is also only the 19th player to win an NBA or WNBA title and either an Olympic or World Cup gold medal the same year. And he’s the very first player not representing the U.S. to do any of it.
Marc Gasol isn’t a prolific scorer but he’s solid. He’s not loud or in your face and there’s nothing particularly exciting or flashy about his game. You have to be a bit of a basketball purist to really appreciate what he does.
You won’t hear him mentioned in the same sentence as the best big men to ever play the game like Tim Duncan, Shaquille O’Neal or Hakeem Olajuwon. Nevertheless, Gasol has accomplished something that none of them ever has.