Pau Gasol i Sáez is a Spanish professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakersof the National Basketball Association (NBA). When he was sixteen, he began playing for Barcelona\'s junior team. He also won both the 1998 Albert Schweitzer Tournament and the 1998 FIBA Europe Under-18 Championship. Gasol was named Most Valuable Player following Barcelona\'s victory in the Spanish National Cup championship game in 2001. Gasol was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in the 2001 NBA Draft, but his rights were traded to the Memphis Grizzlies, with whom he won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award. In his fifth year with the team, he became the franchise’s all-time leading rebounder on March 24 against the New York Knicks when he grabbed his 3,072nd rebound in a Grizzlies uniform. On February 9, 2006, Gasol was selected to play in the 2006 NBA All-Star Game in Houston, Texas as a reserve center for the Western Conference. On February 1, 2008, Gasol was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers and made his first Lakers appearence on February 5 in a game against the New Jersey Nets, during which he scored 24 points. He was part of the Spanish Basketball team that took away the silver medal in the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics.
