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Ding column: NBA players want a ring, and to be part of (Olympic) rings
NBA: Pau Gasol's new frontier with the Lakers is his task at hand, but in many ways his greater challenge will come after the NBA playoffs with the Olympics in China.
kding@ocregister.com
The NBA championship won't mean quite as much this season.
That's because it'll be followed up two months later by an even bigger basketball bash: the Olympics. Worldwide anticipation for basketball at the Olympics is off the charts – which is why as much as Yao Ming's foot injury saddened Houston, there was no comparison to the frayed nerves throughout China, the host country and a longshot contender for gold.
Yao had an open letter published Friday in Chinese newspapers to reassure fans of his intention to return for the Olympics. Given the ridiculously hard-line Communist ways of the Chinese Basketball Administration, the next step will be ordering Yao to send letters to all 1.3 billion people over there, too.No mass e-mail! Hand-written!
Ask Yao about Pau Gasol, neither of whom has won an NBA playoff series, and Yao will tell you there's a fundamental difference between them: Gasol is a champion. Spain won the 2006 FIBA World Championship, even though Yao was the tournament's leading scorer.
You could never get Gasol or Kobe Bryant to say a disparaging word about the upcoming NBA postseason, especially because the Lakers have a real shot. But make no mistake; Gasol and Bryant are totally geeked about the Olympics.
"It's going to be really exciting," Gasol said, smiling. "I'll sign up right now for a nice USA-Spain final."
Spain is third in the FIBA rankings after the U.S. and Argentina, so it might well happen. Bryant plans to put off surgery on his shooting hand for his first real opportunity on a major international stage – even though it likely means he won't be fully recovered for Lakers training camp in October. The Olympics are that important to him.
Look around Staples Center on Tuesday night and you'll see an NBA-high six international players on the Toronto Raptors. Quietly the Lakers have moved up to second on that list – tied with Golden State, Phoenix and San Antonio – with five: Gasol, DJ Mbenga (Congo), Vladimir Radmanovic (Serbia and Montenegro), Ronny Turiaf (France) and Sasha Vujacic (Slovenia). An extremely intriguing Asian representative is en route, too, with 2007 second-round pick Sun Yue – dubbed "the Chinese Magic Johnson" – likely joining the Lakers next season.
When NBA commissioner David Stern was at Staples on Friday night, he said he never imagined such rapid globalization of his league: "Not at all."
"It's a pleasant surprise," Stern said. "And the competition is going to get more intense for jobs in the NBA. More elite athletes are playing basketball – good and potentially great ones. And it's going to continue to put pressure on the game in the NBA in a very positive way."
For the moment, though, foreign players remain the clear minority, which is why Gasol has become such fast friends with Vujacic.
You might have noticed that spectacularly exuberant on-court embrace between the two of them as the Lakers were beating Phoenix last month. Vujacic has been ribbed so much about his Lambeau leap into Gasol's arms that when I mentioned something about the two of them having good on-court chemistry, Vujacic said without smiling: "You are talking about that hug?"
But actually it is Vujacic who has been Gasol's anchor in Southern California. In his first weekend here, Gasol was already at Vujacic's house to hang out.
"He's from Europe; it's his first time in L.A., so I was more than willing to help him not get lost, which is easy to do," Vujacic said. "Where to go, what to do, where are good places to hang out, where is a good place to live."
Now Gasol is settling into his new house in Redondo Beach – where Vujacic's place is, too -- and they also spend considerable time together on the road. Asked about Vujacic's accusation that Gasol creates new rules on the fly in the poker game he's teaching Vujacic on the team plane, Gasol fired back: "No way. I'm not a cheater like he is."
At the start of this NBA season, who could've imagined Vujacic, stuck behind Maurice Evans on the depth chart as Bryant's backup, and Gasol, stuck in Memphis, as two of the Lakers' best players? Yet as the Americans found out in finishing third in that 2006 FIBA World Championship – with only Carmelo Anthony making the all-tournament team – the Europeans can move fast.
The whole world is moving fast, which is why Bryant and Phil Jackson found themselves at the same time separately reading Thomas Friedman's best-selling globalization book, "The World is Flat," last season. This season, Bryant and Jackson are seeing theory become reality with the arrival of one scraggily bearded Spaniard.
For his part, Gasol is probably among the most well-read players in league history, which is why he and Jackson have already enjoyed book-club-style banter about Ernest Hemingway's writings on the Spanish Civil War.
It's an appropriately outdated topic. Basketball will never be about civil wars again.
Contact the writer: kding@ocregister.com
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