FIBA World Cup: Pau Gasol Shines In International Play After Two Bad Seasons With The Lakers! Which Pau Gasol Will The Chicago Bulls Get?
The FIBA World Cup gives a chance for overlooked players to showcase their skills on the world stage. Pau Gasol is not really overlooked, but he has seen two lackluster seasons under a Mike D'Antoni coached Los Angeles Lakers.
That did not deter teams from offering him a reasonably dignified amount. But typical of a winner like Pau, he did not take the highest money offer (that still belonged to the Lakers) and transferred to the Chicago Bulls which has a better chance to win.
The seven foot Spaniard is one of the stalwarts of international basketball. While some of the USA players have abstained due to free agency (Kevin Love, Carmelo Anthony) Pau settled his business without missing a day of practice with the Spanish national team. Pau is very driven to win the title in front of his countrymen who are hosting the event.
Still considered one of the most skilled big men on the planet, Gasol is delivering the numbers along with the determination. Bleacher Report writes:
"The 34-year-old has been downright dominant since returning to his home country.
Through three games, he leads all scorers with 23.7 points per game on 65.1 percent shooting. He blitzed Iran for 33 points, eight rebounds and three blocks in Spain's tournament opener, and that wasn't even his strongest outing.
On Monday, he ripped apart a Brazilian frontcourt featuring NBA bigs Nene, Anderson Varejao and Tiago Splitter. Gasol poured in a game-high 26 points, hit three of five attempts from distance, corralled nine boards, swatted another three shots and added a pair of assists to his exceptional stat sheet."
He was also the leader in overall Player Efficiency (Philippines' June Mar Fajardo is second).
Of course, international competition is a very different level from the NBA. They are also not grinding out 82 regular season games (although they play 5 games in six days). Also, with Team Spain being dominant, points are not so hard to come by.
While Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau is busy trying to find a way for the USA bigs to stop Pau (he is the defensive coordinator for Team USA), he must be salivating at how he will use him when the NBA season starts!