Gasol Hitting the Weights

Really Lost One · Dec 28, 2008

Pau Gasol rocked back and forth on his giant feet, smiling, pleasant, distracted.

"You have somewhere else to be?" I said.

"After this interview, yes," he said.

"Where?" I said.

"The weight room," he said.

I gasped. I froze. I could not have been more shocked had Pau Gasol told me he was going to a barbershop.

Weights? Him? When?

"Two or three times a week, since the start of training camp," he said. "I've never really done it before, but I've got to do it now."

Oh. So he heard.

He heard last spring's cries of "Gasoft." He heard Lakers fans accusing him of disappearing under the weight of Garnett and green. He heard himself being blamed for the NBA Finals loss to the Boston Celtics.

He stopped rocking and stared down at me, his soft eyes quickly turning hard.

"I heard it a lot," he said, his voice rising. "I heard it too much."

"They brought an intensity to the series, we couldn't respond to it, so we got blamed for it," he said, "No, I got blamed for it."

He spent the summer trying to figure out how to change. How does a genuinely nice, sophisticated guy from a privileged background suddenly challenge the scowling, cursing, streetwise Kevin Garnett?

"Well, I could never curse like that," he said.

OK, well, what about the other stuff?

"I'm sure if I had more mean blood in me, more mean motivation, I could act like more of a jerk," he said. "But I can't try to be something I'm not.

"It just won't work."

The Lakers understand this.

"He's not going to elbow anybody in the face, get in somebody's face and yell at them, or outmuscle somebody," Coach Phil Jackson said. "That's not who he's going to be."

So instead of trying to re-create him into a tough guy, the Lakers and Gasol worked on him being a tougher version of himself.

"Resiliency," Jackson said. "That's the thing we kept telling him. You don't have to outmuscle guys . . . [but] you still have to have a resiliency."

Derek Fisher put it another way.

"Toughness is not defined by how you look," the point guard said. "It's defined by how you focus, and Pau has found that focus."
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http://www.latimes.com/sports/printedition/la-sp-plaschke28-2008dec28,0,5909877.column?page=1

Good read. I can't believe Pau is actually lifting weights. The end is near.

illmatic · Dec 28, 2008

Pau take Sasha with you please and toughen that boy up, can't STAND him getting punked by every player and him not doing shit about it.

DaRizzle · Dec 28, 2008

He spent the summer trying to figure out how to change. How does a genuinely nice, sophisticated guy from a privileged background suddenly challenge the scowling, cursing, streetwise Kevin Garnett?

"Well, I could never curse like that," he said.

OK, well, what about the other stuff?

"I'm sure if I had more mean blood in me, more mean motivation, I could act like more of a jerk," he said. "But I can't try to be something I'm not.
Click to expand...

lol...fuck you KG

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