Originally Posted by Gilbert's Arenas Blog

Finally, we flew to Barcelona, home of Pau Gasol. That was a beautiful city too. Spain is beautiful. The home of Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz and one of my favorites … El Calderon! He’s not actually from Barcelona, but the Spanish are Spanish. Actually, they have a lot of pros in the league, believe it or not. They have Pau Gasol, Marc Gasol, Calderon, Garbajosa, Navarro and Rodriguez and Fernandez from Portland. That’s about seven players.

Oh man, but all of the interviews started the same way. I had an interpreter by my side but I heard all the Spanish I needed to hear: “Calderon.” I was thinking, Oh, shoot. Here comes the El Calderon. So, I had to do a lot of speaking about him. It was funny though.

They were very knowledgeable fans about basketball out there. They were asking me questions that I haven’t heard since I was a rookie. They did their research on questions, I was very surprised. I thought I was going to get the same questions … “How does it feel to sign a $100 million deal? … How is your injury? … Can you get the Wizards out of the First Round? … How does it feel losing to Cleveland?” I thought I was going to get the same old questions that reporters say in the states. But, no, they were pulling out some great stuff.

The Barcelonians – I think you can call them Barcelonians – told me, “Yeah! You saved the best city for last!”