By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Recently retired All-EuroLeague forward and two-time champion with Real Madrid Gustavo Ayon compared his runs in both the NBA and in European basketball and discussed why he preferred his experience at the latter.
Here’s what Ayon said in an interview for AS:
“I felt an immense joy that I cannot explain to you with words [when I signed in the NBA]. You have to feel it. I said ‘wow, I achieved what I dreamed of all my life’. The NBA is wonderful. Four teams in three years. But I didn’t want to tour the NBA from team to team. Maybe you play with one team and you don’t play with another. It was an uncertainty. An emotional and sports instability. I didn’t want that. I could’ve been in the NBA for 15 years but what I wanted was to play basketball. I had to be taken off the plane once because of a trade.
When I arrived in Madrid, I played at the highest level; the EuroLeague is at a very close level to the NBA. It doesn’t have the exposure of the NBA when it comes to marketing and entertainment but sports-wise it’s very close. I wanted to be there, to be a part of it. I was an important player on the team in all the titles I have won.”
Ayon played in the NBA from 2011 to 2014 with the New Orleans Hornets, Orlando Magic, Milwaukee Bucks and the Atlanta Hawks. In 2014 he signed with Real Madrid and became an important member of the team that won the EuroLeague championship of 2015; the club’s first in 10 years. The Mexican big man and the Blancos lifted the trophy again in 2018.