KEEPING THE RHYTHM

May 24, 2012

Carlos Cabezas

KEEPING THE RHYTHM

Everyone asks where I keep the gold medal from Japan. Luckily, I have had a lot of good fortune in my sports career so far, with a lot of awards at a young age, like the World Junior Championships in Lisbon in 1999 and the European juniors gold medal from the year before, others we have won as a club or on youth teams. Since I have them all in a trophy case in the living room of my house, that's where I have put the World Championships gold medal we won in September, too. Of course, this one makes you feel a little different. This one tells you that you reached the top. As kids, all of us who love basketball dream of being the best, whether in your city or your country. To dream of being the best in the world is the ultimate, and now to have seen this dream come true is something unbelievable, really. But now, it's time for new challenges. We won it all, yes, but soon after you realize that life goes on and you have to keep shooting for new goals.

Carlos Cabezas - Unicaja

By way of introduction, you should know that I come from a basketball family. My parents came to Spain from Uruguay and my father played here in a lot of cities - Gran Canaria, Granada, Malaga and others in the first division. He had a special talent for outside shooting and could read the game well, too. He was not as fortunate as me, perhaps, to have had the opportunities that I have gotten already in my career. But thanks to him, I am where I am. He helped me get better all the time when I was a kid, whatever I needed. My family has been at my side from when I first started playing as a kid in Marbella, through the Unicaja youth system, always taking me to games or going to them to see me play. They were in Lisbon at the junior worlds and see most of my games in Malaga. Of course, the most special has been having them with us in Japan. Besides us winning the gold, it was a special trip as well, and to share all of that with them made it even better.

Speaking of travel, we had quite a week to start the Euroleague season. We went on the longest trip in our Euroleague group, and then directly from that to the longest trip of the season in the Spanish ACB League. We slept in five different cities in six nights, I think. We woke up Tuesday in Malaga and flew to Madrid and Milan. We slept in Milan on Tuesday, woke up Wednesday and flew to Tel Aviv. Everything was great there, we practiced and played a tough game, but lost. Then, right after the game, we got back on a plane and went back to Milan and Madrid, where we arrived at noon the next day. We slept overnight in Madrid, got a practice in, then flew to Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands for our game on Sunday in the ACB. It takes a long time just to tell, and honestly I don't know if I got it all right! You have to do your best to pass the time on these trips when you're not playing. Guys either have books, play tennis and football on PSP handhelds, listen to music on their iPods, get on the Internet with laptop computers - anything to pass the time. Honestly, we are lucky these days to have all this technology as a diversion, because there are a lot of hours to kill. I wonder how players in the old days did it. I'll have to ask my father.

Carlos Cabezas

Of course, I am not making excuses for losing in overtime in Tel Aviv against Maccabi. That was the beginning of the trip, anyway. The atmosphere at Nokia Arena was impressive. It's been refurbished and it's something to see with all that yellow in the stands. The fans are passionate there and that makes it a great basketball environment to play in. You knew you were back in the Euroleague there. It was also great to have fans and other players come up to me and congratulate me for the World Championships title. It seems that in all corners of the planet, people know that Spain is the world champion. Just being in Nokia motivates you to play. I can say that is true every time I have gone there to play with Unicaja. One time, we had a lot of injuries and I got a lot of playing time the night we beat them on their own floor. So I always liked going there. This time, from the moment I walked out on the court, I felt great. I ended up having the most points and highest index rating of my career, which was great. We made it to overtime, couldn't get the victory, but I think it was positive for us to come close in a difficult place to win like that. We came back and won in the Canary Islands, another tough place to play, so we made a step forward. Now it's time to get ready for our home opener this week. The fans in Malaga deserve one now.

POSTED BY

Carlos Cabezas - Malaga, Spain

DATE:

Tuesday, October 31, 2006