The records of Juan Carlos Navarro, legend of Spanish basketball, are falling. If Rudy Fernández recently surpassed him as the player with the most international appearances for the Spanish team (255 to 253), this Tuesday fellow Real Madrid player Sergio Llull left behind his record of most triples made in the history of the Euroleague. The Spaniard celebrated two bingos in the victory against Baskonia in the first quarterfinal match (this Thursday is the second at 9:00 p.m., Movistar) and raised the mark to 624.
Llull’s competitive appetite remains insatiable in a competition that put him on the Olympus a few months ago in Kaunas. In the last European Cup final, a basket of two by Llull with 3.2 seconds left gave Madrid the victory against Olympiacos. The guard had not scored all night, but when the moment of truth arrived all eyes were on him. “He is the best player in the world in the last second,” Tavares, the team’s star, praised him after the match. “Sergi brings us many things, not only the three-pointers, which are incredible, but that experience that he has, with which he knows how to pressure his teammates, even his coaches,” his coach, Chus Mateo, said this Tuesday.
The clock seems to have stopped for Llull, who at 36 years old ends his contract at the end of the season. His future remains up in the air as he hopes to join the Spanish team at the Paris Games. Like him, also Rudy (who has already announced his retirement with the idea of saying goodbye in his sixth Olympic event), Sergio Rodríguez, Tavares, Poirier and Hezonja end their relationship with the white club, a coincidence that anticipates a busy summer in the offices of the White House.
The years and the scars from injuries, a consequence of a game that is always so explosive, have given Llull the ability to bide his time, as in that agonizing final against the Olympiacos of a great Vezenkov, when at the decisive moment his coach turned towards him and asked: “Sergi, do you want her?” Of course he loved her. It is for those seconds of maximum tension that he lives sportingly. This season he has only started twice in 28 games played in the regular phase of the Euroleague, with 7.7 points and two assists on average per game, but no one doubts that in this final stretch he will step on the court again when it is decided. title.
The player born in Mahón (Menorca) is a three-time European champion with Madrid (2015, 2018 and 2023), the fifth highest historical scorer in the competition and the second with the most games in the tournament (403) compared to Kyle Hines’ 425. and the 401 of Sergio Rodríguez, who completes the podium. And since Tuesday he also looks like the king of the triple, his famous tangerines (After Llull and Navarro, Chacho and Rudy follow in the classification, an overwhelming Spanish dominance in statistics). Up to 39 teams have had at least one success from the perimeter (Anadolu Efes is their biggest victim, with 54). He is also the top three-pointer in the Spanish Cup (68) and third in the ACB, 947, behind Alberto Herreros’ 1,233 and Juan Carlos Navarro’s 1,179.
“Llull, Rudy and Sergio Rodríguez can contribute a lot,” reasons Chus Mateo about his trio of illustrious veterans; “They have a lot of experience and add on and off the field, sometimes in a specific job, with more or less minutes…”. “I love old people!” Andrés Nocioni had commented on a photo of the three teachers after reaching the last Final Four. They are at that starting point again, on the verge of returning to the fight for the crown, from May 24 to 26 in Berlin. And with Llull breaking records.
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