Gasol Steps Back Into A Pressure Point

By Chris Sheridan

ESPN.com

When Pau Gasol got around to speaking English from the podium Sunday, the topic turned to the pressure he is going to be under in Los Angeles.

The expectations that have been thrust upon him, it was pointed out, are 100 times greater than anything he went through in Memphis, and the scrutiny he will be under will rival what he endures back home in Spain.

"I think it's a great type of pressure -- the pressure to win and being one of the favorites is what you want, and it's something I've been missing since I've been in the NBA. I love that I have that with my national team every summer, I had that before I was in the NBA, with Barcelona [of the Spanish League], and that is what I'll have from now on."

So, he loves pressure, eh?
Wasn't there any pressure in any of those 12 playoff games he played for Memphis? Gasol was 0-12 in the postseason with the Grizzlies.
And what about the pressure cooker that was Madrid back in mid-September, a night when a sizeable portion of the city was barricaded off in preparation for a huge midnight parade and party following the final game of EuroBasket 2007?

What happened then? Only one of the most unlikely upsets in recent international basketball history, made possible by Gasol's late misses.
It didn't make a lot of waves here in the States, but Spain, playing on its home soil against Russia, a huge underdog, lost by one point when Gasol's turnaround 20-footer rimmed out at the buzzer to cap a dreadful fourth quarter in which he also missed five of eight free throws. Prior to his final miss, Gasol had the ball stripped from him with 25 seconds left by Russia's J.R. Holden (almost a carbon copy of Michael Jordan sneaking up behind Karl Malone and swiping the ball away right before making his championship-winning jumper over Bryon Russell in the '98 NBA finals), who scored off the turnover for the winning points.

When the folks en España looked for someone to blame that night, most of them placed it squarely on the shoulders of Gasol, wryly noting that it was a good thing Gasol's foot was in a cast a year earlier (he had broken his foot against Argentina in the semifinals) when Spain defeated Greece in the gold-medal game at the World Championship in Japan.

More than a dozen members of the Spanish media were credentialed Sunday at the MCI Center as the Lakers rode Kobe Bryant's 18-point first quarter to an easy 103-91 victory over the Wizards. Gasol is expected to make his Lakers debut Tuesday night at New Jersey.
Prior to the game, Gasol left Wizards and Lakers officials red-faced by responding en español to the first seven questions he was asked -- all of them were posed in Spanish, too, and with no English translation provided, the rest of the room, heavy on monolinguals, appeared half dumbfounded and half bemused.

In a way, it seemed as though the writers from Spain were jumping all over Gasol before the English speakers could get in a word, and therein is a parallel to be drawn. There is a lot of savior talk being thrown Gasol's way, but folks in Los Angeles might be well served to keep an ear open to what the people in Memphis and Madrid are saying, too. Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley said one of the reasons he decided to trade Gasol, who was being booed in Memphis, was that a local fan told him he would never buy another Grizzlies ticket as long as Gasol was the face of the franchise.
"He seemed to perform when the game was on the line whenever we played against them. The big matchups, [Kevin] Garnett and [Tim] Duncan and those guys, he goes right at them and he's had a lot of success against them. So I don't worry about that too much," Bryant said when Gasol's comment about loving pressure was relayed to him.

Gasol and Bryant will have 36 regular-season games to acclimate themselves to each other before the playoffs arrive.
That's when we will see how Gasol handles the pressure, and if he really, seriously, genuinely loves it, he truly will love L.A.
If, however, he folds under it, the scrutiny he gets in Spain and got in Memphis will be nada compared to what he will get in Lakerland.

After all, Gasol ultimately is going to be a key hombre in determining whether Bryant wants to remain a Laker for life.
And that, mis amigos, is pressure.