Now that his Hall of Fame basketball career is over, Pau Gasol is an avid golfer and part-time player at celebrity golf events. He joined this week Subpar podcast to talk about his game, how he got into it and more, but he also shared some stories about his time in the NBA, and a few specifically about his Lakers teammate, the late Kobe Bryant.
Gasol was asked if he had any memories of Kobe that stood out, and while he mentioned that their relationship was good, it wasn’t until his time with the Lakers that it actually improved.
“It was hard for us to let our guards down when we were teammates,” Gasol said on the podcast. “Once I decided to go ahead and sign with the Bulls, we were able to relax a lot more and connect on a deeper level, so go to more dinners and go to more lunches and talk about things other than basketball. Because when you’re in it and you’re in a position to win and you recognize that you have that unique window to win championships, you have to be confident in it and be completely confident.”
He then discussed a viral moment from Netflix’s “The Redeem Team,” a documentary that aired in 2022 and covered the U.S. men’s basketball team’s journey to win the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. In one episode, when the U.S. was preparing to play Gasol and Spain in a preliminary round match, Bryant told his U.S. team members about a strategy he wanted to implement to set the tone of the game. Bryant told his teammates he knew what play Spain would make to open the game, and he knew Gasol would be the one to set the final screen. Bryant said, in a clean version, “I’m going to run through it.”
“He tried to come right out to me to send a message,” Gasol said on Netflix. “Not just for me, but for his teammates to say, ‘Hey, this could be my brother, I play with him, we’re close, but I don’t care about anything but winning.’
Gasol said Bryant was “very intentional and determined” in everything he did, more than anyone he had ever met. That includes the same Olympics when Gasol said Bryant came to visit him in the Olympic Village before the aforementioned game. Someone told Gasol Kobe was looking for him and he replied, “Oh s…”.
“I always felt like he was softening me up, buttering me up,” Gasol said, “but on the court it was like he was telling his teammates, I’m just going through his chest f—– AND I will send a message AND that’s what I’m here to do and that’s the mindset we all need to have.”
