Ricky Rubio, basketball legend, was presented this Monday as a new Barça player. But basketball has ended up playing a very secondary role in the event due to the rawness and honesty of the El Masnou player to openly explain the mental health problems that he has suffered and from which he is still recovering. “When you see yourself reflected in someone you don’t feel so alone, so I hope I can help someone in this way,” he concluded.
Rubio, who has signed until the end of the season and could make his debut this Friday in the Euroleague against Monaco, has gone back to last August, when he decided to abandon the Spanish team’s training camp and step away from basketball for treatment. “At that moment I felt like the most cowardly person in the world, I didn’t understand that I wasn’t able to overcome another problem after so much time in the race. But now, with hindsight, I think I was very brave because I thought about myself first. My problem was bigger than basketball,” he confessed.
The El Masnou point guard has pointed out two main factors, “one internal and one external”, to explain how he arrived at an almost hopeless situation. “The internal is my way of thinking, I believed that there was only one way of seeing things and I have realized that there is more. They have taught me that there are sustainable mechanisms to get ahead in which I still do not believe much but my psychologist tells me He told me to trust, that even though I feel strange, I’m going to move forward because you can get to Rome by many paths,” he said. “The external one was the competition, basketball, I had to get away from it. I was very scared but it was the right thing to do,” he added.
In two moments of a speech that was at times heartbreaking, Rubio repeated the word “fear.” “Fear is relative and everyone suffers it in a different way. In my case, in the end it was that nothing seemed right to me and the player ate the person. I didn’t know who it was, it was a very complicated moment. But they have It has made us see that this fear can be managed. Sometimes it is generalized but being afraid is not the same as having nerves. There are many grays in this life and I am learning to draw them. To anyone who is going through something similar, the first thing I would say is that Don’t be afraid and ask for help from professionals,” he stressed.
“For me it has been an eternity but they have told me that I have gone quite fast. But for three or four months basketball was over for me,” he explained about his recovery process. “It has been like climbing Dragon Khan, with ups and downs, but the important thing is that there was a very solid base,” he added.
Regarding the moment when he saw returning to basketball as a real option, Ricky points out a very specific one. “I was walking in the mountains with my therapist and we started talking about basketball. I told him that if I got the bug again at 50 or 45, I wouldn’t be able to come back and that at 33 I can try. So I gave myself a chance.
Ricky has explained that he has learned not to set long-term goals and that he tries to enjoy every moment, every day. So he has not set a date for his possible debut as a Barça player but he has downplayed the overload on his knee that he suffered on Sunday against Belgium while playing with Spain.
