Ricky Rubio says goodbye to the NBA. The 33-year-old Spanish point guard has reached an agreement with the Cleveland Cavaliers to terminate their contract for the remainder of the season and with the option of another season. The player's future now remains up in the air since he has not played a game since April 23, in the American league, after recovering from a torn cruciate ligament in his left knee, and left the Spanish team's concentration before from the last World Cup due to a mental health problem. Injuries and the fight for his psychological well-being have marked the career of a star with more than 18 years in the elite who now returns to a crossroads. His departure from the NBA could place him back in European basketball (“I'm starting to consider my return”, he had already advanced last May) and even at the door of a possible retirement.
“July 30 was one of the hardest nights of my life,” Ricky commented this Thursday in a statement, about that day with the national team. “My mind went to a dark place. I knew I was going in that direction, but I never thought I couldn't control the situation. The next day I decided to stop my professional career. Someday, when the time comes, I would like to share all my experience with all of you to help other people who are going through similar situations. Until then, I would like to keep it private out of respect for my family and myself, as I am still working on my mental health, but I am proud to say that I am much better and that I am improving every day,” the note adds, confirming that his career in the NBA “has come to the end.”
Life in the elite began very early for a boy who, at the age of 14 years, 11 months and 24 days, in October 2005, made his debut with Joventut in the ACB. Four years later he joined Barça, and as a Barça player he was Euroleague champion the following season. After 205 league games between both shirts (three Cups, two Super Cups and one League), he flew to the NBA. Minnesota, Utah, Phoenix and Cleveland have been stops on a 12-year journey in which he has often felt treated like a commodity. In the mecca of basketball, he has participated in 712 games and has provided 5,248 assists, in addition to being the best player in the League in steals per game in three seasons (2012-13, 13-14 and 15-16).
The loss of his mother, Tona, to lung cancer in 2016 after four years of fighting the disease, shook the foundations of his life and career. “That taught me to ask myself: Why do I have to hide? If I'm bad, why do I have to say I'm good? Saying that being bad, or crying, is not weakness, but the opposite. Expressing your feelings is a symbol of strength. I went through depression. My passion, basketball, was no longer. And how do you stop a train that is going 200 per hour? You can not. But it affected me. He had two paths. Blame the rest of everything that happened to me or learn from it and be stronger. I wouldn't be the person I am today without living that experience. Before, basketball was the most important thing, it was my philosophy of life, and it is no longer. “I don't want to be just the basketball player,” she said about that tough personal journey she went through. Ricky had already suffered a few months before the loss, also due to cancer, of Flipp Saunders, his coach in Minnesota. And in 2018 he created a foundation to raise awareness and fight against the disease. He kept the promise he made to his mother, to help people who needed it, and undertook the project with Víctor Claver, whose father, Paco, died for the same reason.
The mind and body have walked hand in hand in Ricky's life. The point guard tore the cruciate ligament in his left knee on December 29, 2021 with the Cleveland Cavaliers, when he was shining at his best in the NBA. The same injury that he suffered in March 2012, after a collision with Kobe Bryant, kept him out for 13 months this time. “I remember one day, when I arrived at El Masnou two weeks after the operation… I was on crutches and I didn't know how to go down the stairs of my house. “It was five in the morning and I started crying,” he said on the podcast. The Reverse. The absence lasted until January 2023. Rubio wanted to return at full strength and not at half throttle. He invested a lot in that recovery, but upon his return he did not reap the fruit he expected and ended up out of the team's rotation (5.2 points and 3.5 assists on average in 33 games last season).
The injury caused him to miss the 2022 Eurobasket with the Spanish team after being champion and MVP of the 2019 World Cup and playing in the Tokyo Games after joining the group at the last minute, convinced by his wife. With the national team he has dressed in 157 matches and has celebrated seven medals: two European golds and one world gold, an Olympic silver in 2018 and two European bronzes and another Olympic. He returned with La Familia for the World Cup last summer, but left the camp due to a mental health problem. The point guard hoped to share the team's baton with Lorenzo Brown and not carry the responsibility of directing a team that defended the gold on his shoulders, but the injury of the naturalized American with whom Spain was queen of Europe left him alone against the great challenge. When he chained together several workouts in which he was not comfortable, something broke inside. Not even Rudy, the captain, his friend, with whom he shared a room, noticed. “It bothers me because I needed a hug,” explained the forward. A couple of emotional talks with the then federation president, Jorge Garbajosa, and with the coach, Sergio Scariolo, anticipated his farewell to the expedition.
The silence has lasted until now. Saying goodbye to the NBA once again places Ricky at a crossroads.
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