By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Chris Paul of Team USA and Pablo Prigioni of Argentina decided that it was time to leave the stage to the younger generation in their national teams. Both of them announced today that they retire from international play.
As Paul said: “What we do is such a small thing compared to what the people do who protect our freedom. But when I put on that USA jersey it always gave me goose bumps because you realized you were part of something so much bigger than yourself.”
Paul’s first experience with USA Basketball was in high school, when he played for the North team at the Youth Development Festival in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was on the squad that lost to Greece at the 2006 World Championship in Japan—“I remember sitting at my locker,” Paul recalled, “trying to figure out how we were going to go back home”—and he was a leader of the group that redeemed itself with gold medals in ’08 and ’12. “Coming from where we were,” Paul said, “that was the best feeling.”
Prigioni, an Olympic gold mentalist with Argentina in 2004, announced via twitter that he will not be play in Rio with the Argentinian national team. Being 39 years old, this decision is not strange, however with Manu Ginobili returning on the team, everyone expected Prigioni to be there too. As he wrote: “It was not an easy decision, I am unhappy, but on the same time I am grateful for all those games with the national team”.