This honestly comes to no surprise for anyone that Pau Gasol was named player of the year for FIBA. Gasol has lead his Spanish National Teams to several important medals and accomplishments during the past 10 years. In the NBA, he is the top foreign player at all positions. This is the second year in a row that Gasol was awarded the player of the Year, similiar to Ricky Rubio as youth player of the year.
Spain has taken three of the four awards of FIBA:
- Player of the Year (Men) – Pau Gasol
- Youth Player of the Year (Male) – Ricky Rubio
- Youth Player of the Year (Female) – Alba Torrens
Below is the public ranking of players for the award!
- Pau Gasol 433 9,815 0,335
- Dirk Nowitzki 94 5,370 0,078
- Vassilis Spanoulis 63 1,903 0,049
- Milos Teodosic 60 4,058 0,050
- Erazem Lorbek 48 7,046 0,046
- Rudy Fernandez 48 4,022 0,042
- Juan Carlos Navarro 46 3,892 0,040
- Tony Parker 44 2,011 0,036
- Hidyet Turkoglu 31 4,479 0,030
- Ersan Ilyasova 21 4,525 0,022
- Nikola Pekovic 24 1,936 0,021
- Marcin Gortat 9 8,837 0,020
- Novica Velickovic 10 4,783 0,015
- Ioannis Bouroussis 12 1,417 0,011
- Igor Rakocevic 3 2,024 0,005
- Lior Eliyahu 0 1,032 0,002
With the marks of top Spanish National teams and figures such as Rafael Nadal who just won the Wimbledon after a 44 year drought for Spanish Players and the Spanish Soccer team who also won the Euro2008 after not winning in the 40s. The national teams for Spain both women and men are hoping to follow in those footsteps in Pekin during the Olympic Summer Basketball Games!