Pau Gasol did not take the floor for an NBA team during the 2019-20 campaign. While the veteran big man signed a deal to join the Portland Trail Blazers at the start of the year, he did not appear in any games and was waived back in November. His career isn’t over, though, according to a report by Varlas Nikos of EuroHoops.net.
Gasol, a native of Barcelona who started his professional career with his local club, is slated to return to Catalonia. Nikos reports that Gasol and his boyhood club are expecting to wrap up a deal later this summer that will have him suit up for Barcelona one last time, and per his report, the goal is for Gasol to have things come full-circle by suiting up with Spain’s national team during next summer’s Olympics.
If a deal happens, Pau would return to his roots as he was born in Barcelona and that’s where he made the first basketball steps. He started off in Barca’s junior selection and played for three years in the pros before moving on to a successful two-decade-long NBA career.
The ideal unfolding of Pau Gasol’s story would be that the Spaniard completes a full circle in his career with one year at Barca and then retire after one final Olympic run with the national team in Tokyo.
Ideally the arrangement between the two sides does not fall through despite things being “very close to happening,” because it would be really cool to see Gasol play for Barca one final time before he calls it a career. For his NBA career, the two-time champions suited up for five different franchise and averaged 17 points and 9.2 rebounds a night with six All-Star game selections.