After Madrid derailed Barcelona on the fast track in the semifinals of the Endesa League, with a loud and expressive 3-0, the faces of the Barça players were long, gestures twisted by the slap. It was that of the coach, who accepted the fiasco of a blank season and who has already been fired, and it was that of the locker room, incapable of staying on their feet in a year of disappointments. But so was that of Ricky Rubio, who attended the media with his head bowed, very sad. “I have no idea if I will continue next year. I don’t want to make the decision in advance, but rather spend a few weeks with a cool head to be able to evaluate everything. It has not been easy. Now in the heat it is difficult to decide,” he said. Days later, he learned of his resignation from the Spanish team, the pre-Olympics in Valencia and the Games if he made it through. “I had it very decided during the season. I would have liked to go, but my sports career depends on this summer whether I continue or not. It was selfish to lend myself to the national team without being one hundred percent. “I had to think about myself at that moment,” he resolved this Friday during an appearance within the framework of CECOB 2024, a congress on oncological clinical trials held in Barcelona.
Rubio left basketball for six months because his head said enough, because “he went to a very dark place,” because he did not understand what was happening to him, tired of an orange ball that he no longer wanted to know anything about. He did not name his illness, whether it was depression or something else. He simply said goodbye. Taking refuge with a sports psychologist and working on himself, getting to know himself and, as he announced, learning to draw in gray because not everything is black or white, Ricky’s desire to shoot baskets, to share a locker room, returned. He would not do it again in the NBA and the opportunity came with Barcelona, who accepted that he would be on probation for a few weeks, who later signed him at the expense of the decision, and who extended his contract until the end of the course when it was decided. return. There have been a few months in which his participation in the team has gone from less to more, to the point that on occasions he ended up taking ownership from Satoransky. But Ricky has not been what he was and has not exhibited a very refined version, even though he did leave flashes of that kind that falls out of his pockets. “Coming into the middle of the season and not feeling one hundred percent is not easy. I haven’t been everything I expected, but I didn’t have any expectations either. The balance is not good,” the player accepted at the end of the season.
Now, at 33 years old and with Barcelona open to him returning to the team, Ricky must decide what step to take. “I’m fine. It is true that there have been complications and I knew it was not going to be easy. I wanted to get away from the sensations I had during the season so I could have a free mind and know exactly where to go,” he said this Friday. He will not do so with Spain in the Games and it is not known if he will return to Barça or basketball. He has the word; he has earned it.
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