Looking Back: The Gasol Family

Given that the 2012 NBA All Star Game falls on the same night as the Academy Awards, I'm not sure how much of it I'll watch this year.  As I've covered here on Caught Looking before, the NBA All Star weekend can be a ton of fun in person - there's a great energy throughout the host city that I find hard to replicate on TV.  One story I will be interested in following from this year's game, though, is how Memphis forward Marc Gasol will do in his first All Star appearance.  With older brother and Lakers forward Pau not invited to the game this season, Marc's selection to the Western Conference All Stars was undoubtedly bittersweet for the Gasol family.

How do I know this, you ask?  I attended my first NBA All Star weekend in 2009 in Phoenix, less than a year after I started working at the NBA offices in New York.  Being that I had no real reason to be at the All Star game, I was assigned a job with the Transportation team, tasked with making sure the All Stars and their families got where they needed to go throughout the weekend.  I spent a day and a half at the Phoenix airport getting escorted through TSA security, meeting players and their family members at their gates, and escorting them to baggage claim and on to cars and limos waiting for them curbside.  I met a number of NBA players including Brook Lopez, Wilson Chandler and Nate Robinson that weekend, and also helped a hopelessly lost Luis Scola - whom I recognized from afar as he wandered aimlessly through the airport corridors - find teammate Aaron Brooks at one point. The clear highlight of the Transportation group assignment, however, was getting to meet Pau and Marc Gasol's parents.

Maybe next season Pau and Marc Gasol will be All Star teammates.

Every parent loves to watch his or her children play sports.  I always assumed, however, that the novelty of seeing your kid succeed on the basketball court wears off at some point, and the pride you have for their accomplishments diminishes over time.  Not for the Gasol family - when I met the middle-aged parents of Pau and Marc, they were so proud to have both of their basketball-playing sons participating in All Star weekend (Pau as a Western Conference All Star, Marc as a participant in the Rookie Challenge game) that they literally couldn't stop talking about it.  The Gasols told me all about how much the weekend meant to them, and how they still couldn't get over how much their lives had changes over the past decade.  It wasn't long before that the Gasols were living in Spain - now, they had moved permanently to Memphis, where Marc played and where Pau started his career (the two were actually traded for each other when the Lakers acquired the older brother).

Most of All Star weekend is about glitz, glamour and hype.  Meeting the Gasol family in 2009, however, reminded me that most NBA players, and most athletes in general, were at one time normal kids growing up in average families.  Many parents make tremendous sacrifices for their children, and the Gasols are no different.  Fortunately for them, their journey from Spain to Memphis has turned out extremely well - as they told me, the Gasols are very happy with their new life in the Southeast U.S., and spend as much of their time as possible watching both of their sons (hometown Marc in particular) play the sport that they love.  More than anything else I've ever experienced at an NBA All Star weekend (I've been to three - Phoenix, Dallas and Los Angeles - and counting), my chat with Pau and Marc Gasol's parents will be the thing I hope to always remember.