Suddenly, the Palau Blaugrana lights up.
He does it between the noise of the parquet, which creaks with the footsteps of the giants and between the noise of cranes, which comes and goes outside.
Barça is under construction.
Three dozen reporters fill out forms and request an audience with the basketball section, as they have learned that Ricky Rubio (33), a legend who has been training behind the scenes for six months, battling a personal crisis in the form of depression, is he trains with Blaugrana.
The situation is a slow tempo, perhaps the embryo of a paradigm shift in the entity, since Ricky Rubio is an essential basketball player and Barcelona basketball is looking for its own identity, a franchise player who will relaunch the section, today a mountain Russian that generates magnificent moments and other questionable ones.
When the Palau Blaugrana finally opens its doors and the reporters leave the stands, the eyes focus on Ricky Rubio, who wears the Blaugrana uniform, is relaxed and focused among his eventual teammates and shoots a basket from the area three One inside, and another and another.
Baskets with ease, receives from Jabari Parker and baskets again.
–If Ricky Rubio had to play right now, would he be in a position to do so? – they later ask Roger Grimau, the Barcelona coach.
– Let me think about the answer, because I have to be careful with the title. Physically, he is fine and fit – Grimau hesitates.
Nervous laughter in the room.
By then, Ricky Rubio is already in the shower.
He left before his colleagues, escorted by the press officer of the section, since today the man does not speak, today he does not play.
He doesn’t play for Barça yet, we are at the beginning of the process.
– What I am is happy to see him on a track. I am happy as a person, apart from as an institution and a club, because he has counted on us for this process – says Roger Grimau, who endures the downpour: he answers a dozen questions, only a couple of which refer to the party against the Virtus.
– But has any decision been made regarding him yet?
– We haven’t talked about any return. We have only offered you our facilities. Good players always add up, in any circumstance. Besides, it’s easy with him: before I finish the sentence he already knows what I’m going to say to him, because he has a lot of basketball. And if, in addition, he is excellent as a person, as is his case, the decision is very easy. But the word of the day is normality, this is how we manage this situation indoors, no matter how much commotion is generated outside.
The commotion is inevitable.
Ricky Rubio, MVP of the 2019 Basketball World Cup, NBA star (he played for the Cleveland Cavaliers until a month ago), has been out of action for six months. The crisis comes from the summer. Concentrated with the Spanish team in Madrid, days before the last World Cup, a depressive process left him out of action.
“My mind went to a dark place”, he explained a month ago, in a statement announcing his farewell to the NBA.
Twelve years have passed in the USA, a dance of travel and emergencies that has damaged his mental health. Saturated, he has lived the last few weeks in the Maresme, secluded with his wife and son, Liam (4), focused on family, meditation, golf and bodybuilding, decongesting himself from basketball.
-If he plays again, it won’t be in the NBA. It will be near here – explained his father, Esteve Rubio, in La Vanguardia, a few weeks ago.
The possibility is taking shape now.
– It hasn’t been a normal training, a new guy has come that we all appreciate – says Nicolás Laprovittola, Barcelona escort. But training had real match situations and it was a good session. I have seen Ricky Rubio very well. He knows the club (he was at Blaugrana between 2009 and 2011, before going to the NBA) and he knows where he comes from.
