The point guard from Masnou Ricky Rubio reviewed his career and detailed the psychological problems that have caused him to pause his career. One of the most talented point guards in recent times, he has won a World Cup, two Eurobasket tournaments, an Olympic silver, an Olympic bronze, and two bronzes in European Championships with Spain.
Ricky Rubio (34) has highlighted his self-demand as a problem in an interview with “Lo de Évole” on LaSexta. “The 2019 World Cup is one of the greatest successes we had, especially as a team. Even though I won the MVP, I wasn’t euphoric about it, because for me it wasn’t enough. And when I’m receiving the award I say ‘I’m just a fraud, I don’t deserve this.’ Like in Space Jam, I felt like they were going to take my powers away.”
He also acknowledges that he had a tough time in the NBA. ‘I had a rough third year. Things weren’t going well and I gave an interview to a journalist. My parents came to see me in Minneapolis and after the game I talked to my mother and cried and told her that I wanted to leave. And my mother said, ‘Let’s go.’ I told her no, but I saw that she was someone who didn’t want to convince me, she was just worried about making sure I was okay.’
Death of his mother
Ricky explains how difficult it was for him with the illness and the subsequent passing of his mother. “When they detected cancer in my mother, during the 2015-16 season, she was very sick. I would leave training and call her, but that year things were going very badly for me. She would hang up because she had to vomit and was feeling bad. During the All-Star break, I decided to come to Barcelona to see my mother, and I saw her like I had never seen her before.”
And it adds, “On the way back, I thought that I shouldn’t take that flight, I knew my mother wasn’t going to last long. But I had to go back to play, why? I felt that I had to go play, but I didn’t want to do it. Luckily, I believe my mother waited for me. When the season ended, I came back and I got to see her. If she hadn’t waited for me, I would have never forgiven myself.”
Second knee injury
He also explained his second knee injury. “I know I’m injured, but I don’t accept it. I didn’t even want to pick up the phone to my wife because I knew I had hurt myself. And my first reaction is ‘this hasn’t happened to me, but they are going to freak out and I am going to come back stronger than ever.’ And I spent a whole year with a feeling I don’t understand, where I’m angry at the world. I trained like a robot for everything to go perfectly. But something was happening that wasn’t good. I return to play, I complete the preparation for the World Cup and I go to the World Cup, but I have a really strange feeling inside.”
Something is not right
Without a doubt, the strongest aspect of the interview was the feeling he experienced after that moment. ‘I look in the mirror and think, ‘something is not right’. I spend three days almost without sleeping and dreaming dark things. I asked for help as I knew how, and that afternoon I had free, my wife comes to see me. I tell her, ‘you have to help me pack my bags’. And she laughs and says, ‘let’s go for a walk’. But I say to her, ‘I can’t pack, I can’t leave, but you have to help me’.
My life has no meaning
Ricky Rubio continues. “Just a very difficult thought, and I don’t want to magnify it at all, but one night when I was in the hotel, I said ‘I don’t want to continue, not just with basketball, but with life.’ I have a family, I have a son… but I thought about it for a second, feeling that something was taking control of me. I can understand a lot of people, both those who are in moments of success and unfortunately have taken their own lives, or average people who say they can’t go on, because there comes a moment when everything weighs so much on you… I remember during the World Cup when I say ‘I stop,’ it feels like I’m dying and that my life has no meaning.”
He also acknowledges that he was ‘two sessions’ away from getting medicated. ‘I have a lot of respect for medicating myself, although I have a lot of respect. For me, it was like ‘I can’t do it, I’m not enough’. It felt like a defeat, not being able to do it by myself.’
He has been enigmatic about his future. “I would like to play basketball without being Ricky Rubio, but it’s impossible. I want to play basketball, but I can’t. I am pushing myself to see if I can. The answer is becoming clearer every time. And what we know is that we don’t have all the answers. I don’t even know myself.”
