Pau Gasol understands what his brother Marc is going through right now as a member of the Memphis Grizzlies.
The team is in a rebuilding year and is long a ton of games. Marc is frustrated and upset at the losing. Pau lived a similar reality when he was a member of the Grizzlies for the first few years of career before he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
When talking about Marc's plight, Pau reflected a bit on some of the circumstances surrounding his exit from Memphis and his subsequent joining of the Lakers, per Ronald Tillery of the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
“It got to a point where I felt like I needed to be somewhere else to have a chance to win and be in a franchise that provided me with more consistency, and a shot at winning a championship,” said Pau, a two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers. “That’s what I wanted at the time. I was 27 years old. Marc is at a different stage.”
Pau Gasol was actually traded for the rights to Marc, whom the Lakers had previously drafted. The trade worked out for both parties, as Pau won a pair of championships and Marc turned out to be a very good player.
But Marc is now 33 years old, an age considered to be at the end of the prime of an athletic career. He has been with the Grizzlies his entire career, and has stayed loyal to the franchise over the years. He also has two years left on the max contract he signed in 2015.
Marc might be thinking of leaving, and there were some who thought he would be a prime trade target at the deadline. But perhaps with his contract, that would not be the best course of action for most teams that will not have cap space in the near future.
But one thing is for sure: Marc can still play, and there are teams with better futures that would make room to acquire him. The question is when, not if, that will happen.
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