Pau Gasol Biography

Pau Gasol Biography

Pau Gasol Sáez (born July 6, 1980, in Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain) is a 7'0" (2.13 m) Catalan Spanish basketball player. Gasol played in the Spanish ACB League for FC Barcelona, where he had an average of 11.3 points per game. He now plays in the National Basketball Association for the Memphis Grizzlies, with whom he won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 2002.

Selected 3rd in the 2001 NBA Draft by the Atlanta Hawks, his draft rights were traded to the Memphis Grizzlies in exchange for Shareef Abdur-Rahim. He plays for Spain's national basketball team, and is already considered by many fans in his home country to be the best basketball player ever from his country. He maintains that his top goal in life is to follow in his family's footsteps and become a medical doctor in the future.

Gasol has often been compared with fellow European players Toni Kukoč and Dirk Nowitzki. Gasol is a very gifted low-post scorer who regularly scores 20 points a night. He sports a nice hook shot, can score outside and inside, and also is near-ambidextrous. He can reasonably hit his free throws, averaging at about .750 (a high figure for a "big man"). He has also averaged 1.9 blocks and 8.4 rebounds per game in his career.

On February 9, 2006, for the first time in his career, Gasol was selected to play in the 2006 NBA All-Star Game in Houston as a reserve center for the Western Conference.

He was the first Spanish basketball player as well as the first Grizzlies player to ever make it to the All-Star Game, and also holds the Grizzlies record for most points scored in a single game, with 44 on February 27, 2006.

Gasol will miss the first half of the 2006-07 NBA season due to a broken foot suffered near the end of Spain's semifinal win over Argentina in the 2006 FIBA World Championship. He would go on to be named Most Valuable Player of the tournament, which Spain won.

He is involved with a lot of community work organized through the Memphis Grizzlies.