It’s a testament to Pau Gasol’s amazing skill and locker room testament that he was the big man not named Shaq who could help Kobe Bryant win titles and become one of his closest friends while doing it. Thanks to a Jimmy Butler injury, Pau was able to share in Kobe’s last All-Star Game, and on Sunday, Kobe played his final game against Gasol’s current team, the Chicago Bulls. As you can see above, it was another in the long line of emotional moments from Kobe’s farewell tour.
As has been the tradition in the Mamba’s final season, the media once again asked Kobe to reminisce, this time about his time with Pau on the Lakers. Back in 2008, those Lakers lost to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals, and Gasol’s Spanish national team lost in the Olympic Gold Medal Game to Kobe’s U.S. team. It was a lot of second-best for Gasol, and Kobe reminded him of it at the start of the next season.
Both to motivate and tease his teammate, Bryant hung his gold medal by Gasol’s locker to open the 2008-09 season.
“ ‘You can’t finish second in June this year,’ ” Bryant recalled saying. “ ‘You have to get your (stuff) together.’ ”
Gasol laughed when relayed the story.
“He said, ‘Good job finishing second,’ ” Gasol said. “I don’t know if he brought his medal. But he definitely talked trash.”
Pau Gasol is by many accounts one of the very nicest guys in the NBA, so it makes sense that he would never take some trash talk (or tough-love motivation) as a shot at his ego. What he brought to the locker room was just as much the reason for his success with Kobe as his skill in the post and on the boards. And who knows, maybe that gold medal did inspire Pau to help drive the Lakers to back-to-back titles after that. Well, that or Andrew Bynum.
