Antonio Martín: "My brother Fernando received me in Madrid with a host, it was his way of protecting me"

There is very little material on Antonio Martín. Royalty of Spanish basketball, by race and by blood, his exposure has been strikingly scarce outside of his work on the court and in the offices. Because? “I wasn't running away from her, but popularity didn't seem transcendental to me.”. Being known beyond my role as a player did not interest me.. The other day, while moving, I found the typical folder that my mother made with press clippings from when she played and, looking at my statements, the conclusion is that I was better off keeping quiet,” laughs the current president of the ACB League in his office. from Madrid.

What were you saying? The nonsense of any person of that age. It's very difficult when you read what you said when you were young not to feel ashamed.. There was only one thing that I liked. Which one? In an interview, when I was 21 years old, they asked me what my goal was for when I grew up and my answer was: “Normality.”. It's something that has obsessed me all my life and the only thing that didn't make me blush about that folder.

Normality was never a real option for the Martíns, but they did not stop pursuing it. Antonio (Madrid, 1966) was international 62 times, bronze and member of the ideal quintet in Eurobasket 91 and winner of 14 major titles with Real Madrid, but he retired at the age of 29 tired of that life. Antonio was also Fernando's little brother, the eternal legend who took refuge, whenever he could, in the mountains to feel normal for a night and escape from a fame so enormous that it is difficult to explain to those who did not experience it.. “We were raised like this. My father relativized our success a lot. He was happy, but at home what we did was not magnified. On the street it was another story. Fernando had it more difficult, because he was much bigger, but he still tried and, seen from now, it was a great merit that he never lost his mind.. When we talk about him it seems that he was very old, but he died when he was 27 years old.. He did everything too well. He negotiated the emotional turmoil in which he lived excellently.. And I have always tried to do the same,” Martín reflects.

Antonio and Fernando Martín, in a training session in the early 80s. MARCA Let's go back to the beginning, to your childhood, Fernando didn't look like he was the kind of brother who sometimes lets the little one win so he's happy. No way.. Neither in sports nor in board games. And our two older brothers were the same. Let's say we weren't exactly good losers. Being the little one there was tremendous, they even gave me my ID card. Your height pushed you, but basketball was not the sport of reference in the Martín house when you were children. No, the sport where the four brothers insisted the most [Antonio was the youngest and Fernando, the third], or more our parents insisted, it was swimming. We trained in the pool a lot and from a very young age, but I also did judo and taekwondo. And Fernando played handball very seriously.. But the basketball coach of the school [San José del Parque] was also the coach of the Infantil de Estudiantes. He encouraged us, because we were obviously tall and good athletes, and we entered the Estu quarry when I was 13 or 14 years old.. Me, in the Infant A and Fernando, in the youth. We arrived being very bad, my first year all my classmates seemed to me from another galaxy. There was a certain José Antonio Montero and I had been playing for two days.. I bounced the ball on my foot all the time [laughs]. You learned quickly… They hanged me by force. You are training daily with people much better than you and that helps a lot. Hours and hours working at La Nevera bore fruit. It was a process. You're a kid and you need reinforcements to say: “Hey, man, maybe we can even make it semi-regular in this basketball thing.”. For me, there is a turning point which is when in the summer of 1982 I began to go to training camps with the youth team, with Miguel Nolis, and in 1983 we were European runners-up. That summer you left Estu to go to Madrid, just like Fernando two years before. It is a well-trodden path, but always controversial. Ours was much less traumatic than other cases like that of Alberto [Herreros].. From my current position I can speak little about that, but if I take off my president's jacket, I understand that the nature of both clubs are different and these things, although it may not seem like it to the Estu fan, benefit both. Was that there? When did you start taking basketball as something more than a complement to your studies? I was 17 years old and I had no plans, but arriving at Real Madrid meant a fairly drastic change. I saw those people on television and, suddenly, I was traveling, training and living with them. Assimilating it was already difficult in itself, but I also had a brother playing on that team.. And not just any brother. How did he receive you? With a host [laughs]. Fernando's way of protecting his little brother was the complete opposite of what one might think.. The hardest blow I took in the first training sessions with Madrid was from my brother. But it was really hard, being sore for several days. I told him: “Hey, Fer, if this is the move to play basketball together, tell me clearly, because I don't care and I'll leave it without a problem.”. But then I understood that it was his way of telling the rest of the team: “This is my brother and if you have to hit him, I'll hit him, but you can't even touch him.”

Antonio rebounds above his brother in 1984. MARCA You arrive just when Fernando, Iturriaga, Corbalán or Romay become rock stars in Spain with the fourth place won by the USA in the World Cup in Colombia 82, the runner-up defeating the USSR in Sabonis in the Eurobasket 83 and the Olympic silver in Los Angeles 84. It is the great boom of basketball and, in a country in the midst of change, you become the sport that represents that modernity. It was a sum of circumstances. First, of course, they had very important sporting results and, second, it coincided with a locker room with characters with a lot of personality and very heterogeneous. From a Rafa Rullán to a Juanma Iturriaga or from a Juan Corbalán to a Fernando Martín there is an abyss as ways of being, but they all transcended their condition as basketball players and became public and popular figures.. As it happened at the same time in Barcelona with Epi and company. It also coincided with a moment of weakness in football, with strikes and the disappointment of the 82 World Cup.. In this context, Los Angeles had a brutal pulling power, the country of the short people suddenly wins an Olympic silver medal and that has a brutal social impact. You were part of the Movida. Absolutely. That basketball Real Madrid was no stranger to everything that was happening in the country in general and in the city in particular.. Some fantastic years with a need for a cultural explosion, for a demand for freedom, for a thousand things that for me were a privilege to live at that age and with those characters who were tremendous.. They are tremendous. However, in 1986, already established in the first team, you make an absolutely unexpected decision and go to the United States to play at Pepperdine University. He had had a major injury to his patellar tendon and had been in the team for two years. those that Lolo Sainz, whom I adore and knows it, did not give me many opportunities. Neither to me nor to anyone, really, because at that time they played with five or six players and Lolo, especially. The fact is that there came a time when I began to think about other avenues and it seemed like a good idea to go to a university to study while playing and see what would happen later.. Everything was articulated before Fernando had a contract with Portland to go to the NBA, but in the end we both met in the US the same year. At that time, going to the United States was moving to Mars. Totally. In 1986, the difference between Los Angeles [Pepperdine's campus is in Malibu] and Madrid was much more abysmal than now in every sense.. Today it is very normal to take a flight and go to New York, but I arrived like Paco Martínez Soria with the old leather suitcase. A situation of being with your ears wide open and learning, because it was hard. It was an idyllic place and my friends from Madrid laughed a lot because I told them it was hell and, of course, they saw photos and…. But we must keep in mind that in Madrid I lived a life in which I hardly had to think about anything or worry about anything.. When you are in a club like Real Madrid, they give you everything done, and I got there and I didn't even know where to pick up the books. Luckily, on the fourth or fifth day of being very lost, an assistant coach told me that there was another Spanish woman at the university who could still give me a hand.. She told me she would be in the library and I ran out of the gym to look for her… Did you find her? Yes. Do you know who it was? Marisa Sánchez Vicario, Arantxa's sister. She still laughs today at the look on her face when I greeted her, like: “Save me, please.”. And he did. It was a blessing, because up to that point everything had gone wrong since I landed in Los Angeles.. I arrived at the airport and they forgot to come pick me up, I was there for four hours without knowing what to do, there were no cell phones and I thought the best thing was to go straight home. All this with the English that we knew in the 80s, which is what you studied in school. Then it improved, right? A lot. First, the university experience and, then, Los Angeles, which is a city that takes you a few months to get to know, understand and enjoy, but then it has a thousand great things.

After a year there, you return to Madrid with a more important role. I returned recovered from my knee and, in addition, I got stronger there because the training was demanding. The truth is that I didn't know very well what was coming.. I was thinking of doing the preseason with Madrid and we would see, but the reality is that in the month of November I was with the senior Spanish team.. That year everything went very quickly and I realized as I was playing. When I came back, I didn't have a clear awareness of what my level was, I saw it on the fly. With the national team you catch the era of progressive decline after the great previous generation. Well, it's life. We were what we were. After 84, the first big disappointment was the 86 World Cup in Spain. I wasn't there yet, but it was painful because we expected to continue with the successful stage and it couldn't be. From there everything was complicated, except the blow we hit in '91 [bronze in the European Championship with Antonio in the ideal quintet of the tournament], and Barcelona '92 was the worst moment. You are not going to those Games due to injury, at least you are You saved the blow. In the League final against Joventut, there is a play in which Corny Thompson hits me and breaks my neck and I can't go, but the result doesn't matter, for an athlete there is no privilege like playing in the Olympic Games and if they are also in your country, it is already incomparable. I'm very angry about losing them. In fact, I left Spain. Juan Antonio Samaranch, father, sent me invitations to go to all the Games. They arrived at my house and I watched the inauguration on TV with the idea of going further, but…. I have never told this. I thought it wouldn't affect me, but watching the ceremony hurt me a lot, it hurt me.. I called a friend and told him: “Get plane tickets to leave Spain right now, wherever, I don't want to be here.”. And I spent all the Games in Mexico without seeing anything. I wasn't lucky as an Olympian. You did go to Seoul 88. But something hard also happened to me because that thing arose that Fernando couldn't play for the national team because he had been in the NBA.. The things that sometimes occur to those of us in the offices that we would be better off painting with watercolors. That hurt because participating in the Games with your brother is very special. That injury marks the last years of your career.. The image is terrible, taking you out immobilized on a stretcher, without sensitivity. It was an act of bad luck, without further ado.. The thing is that I was at my best, with great enthusiasm and…. Suddenly the doctors don't tell me if I'm going to play again or not. The neurosurgeons had no certainty and told me that, more than basketball, what I should worry about is recovering completely for life.. The rehabilitation lasted about seven full months, every day from Monday to Saturday. Mentally it was very hard. When sport is not so beautiful… Being a professional athlete has side A and side B, like all lives. The journalist, the industrial engineer…. What happens is that it has only been 10 or 15 years since people began to talk, both in audiovisual pieces and in books, about that B side of sport.. When I played it wasn't like that, that didn't exist, people didn't want to know who was inside the Mickey Mouse suit. And on the street it wasn't much different. There was no talk about how many children were bullied at school nor was data on suicides given.. Now all this is beginning to change and it is very important that we talk about mental health and end the stigma. It is part of the evolution of a society. Things are conquered and this one, in particular, cost a lot.

Antonio, next to his brother's shirt on the bench, in the Madrid-PAOK match played two days after his death. EM A case like that of Ricky Rubio this summer was unthinkable then. The issue of Ricky magnifies him and was unthinkable years ago, but even now the athlete is still expected to be a superhero who does not show weaknesses. Even so, many people have understood Ricky and he also helps others to be understood.. It is very important. Returning to Madrid, you are a direct witness of Petrovic's legendary season and his fights with Fernando and the others. Was it that bad? It wasn't that much, but it was something [laughs]. Drazen is one of the wildest talents I have ever met in my life and he had a way of being, shall we say, special. He was very clear about what he wanted to do and that “very clear” sometimes clashed with the general interests of a team.. That clashed head-on with Fernando, who was another heavyweight with a lot of personality, but he has created too much legend with his fights.. There was some discussion, but they were united by one thing.. Do you know what Petrovic asked me before many games? “What do we have to do to win today?”. He was a player who had to revolve everything around him, but he was a winner. That mattered to him more than anything.. The thing is that, sometimes, that selfishness was harmful. For example, the famous Cup Winners' Cup final that we won against Caserta and he scored 62 points, would have been won more comfortably if he had not scored so much. Your level did not stop rising, but you always had other sensational centers ahead of you. That's right, always I was with very quality players in my position, brutal teammates. We talked about Fernando, but in the last years of my career I had Sabonis and Arlauckas in front of me. In return, that gave a brutal quality of training and made the team compete, because in the end you play how you train.. In that early period of the 80s, many five-on-five training sessions were harder than the games, because Madrid's substitutes would have been starters on almost all the other teams.. The fact is that I don't have the feeling of having had a very high professional development, that's the truth.. I think that my titles and my achievements are normal when I have always been in such talented teams. Do you feel like a supporting actor? No, that is never. In fact, there was a moment in the national team in the early 90s when I had to pull the wagon and I did.. It was Epi who told me when he was starting to get older: “Now it's your turn.”. And it didn't scare me. I have had different roles and I have accepted them all. It is inevitable to talk about Fernando's death, on December 3, 1989. Years go by and that day never stops being remembered.. As a brother, I don't know if it's a way to perpetuate the pain, never being able to turn the page.No. That feeling of “leave me alone, let me grieve for my brother” lasted for the first two years.. From there, I want Fernando to be talked about as much as possible because he deserves it.. It would kill me if Fer was not remembered on every anniversary of his death. It is a joy for me that, 34 years later, he is still remembered, that there are young people who research Fer…. It catches my attention and is a joy.. I don't know, I remember him every day, how can I not like that others do too? It's a day that two or three generations have recorded. Many people have told me this, who know perfectly well where he was and what he was doing when he found out. of the news. It is normal. Fernando was a superhero in that Spain and his death, at the age of 27, was totally against nature.. How can this happen to a giant? What I remember most about those days was the reaction of the basketball world, the rivals and the public on the courts.. Respect and silence. The applause when he left. It was very exciting.

Joe Llorente, Quique Villalobos and Antonio Martín. MARK The first game after his death, two days later, is against PAOK and your coach, George Karl, said that at half-time you were losing and you got angry with your teammates: “You are playing like a gang of sons of bitches.”. You won by 21 points. I hadn't slept for two days and I had buried Fernando that morning. I don't think I was too clairvoyant, but I felt a lot of pent-up anger and I let it out.. We lost by 13 at half-time and that day at the Palacio de los Deportes the sadness and pain were felt.. A brutal feeling. The people who were at that game as an audience still tell me that they have never experienced an atmosphere like it.. It was difficult. George, who is a super-emotional, super-human person, was devastated, devastated, and didn't want me to play.. When we got to the locker room before the game I saw that he was not on the board with the starters, even though he always was. I forced him to put me on, but we weren't ourselves and during the break I slammed the table. And something happened. In the second half we would have beaten anyone. It wasn't basketball, it was something else. Lolo Sainz maintains that it took a long time for Madrid's basketball section to fully recover from that blow. At least three years. Maybe more. It was very hard for everyone. I'm not talking about myself anymore, I'm talking about the group. First, that level of frustration and anger that paralyzes you. And then, little by little, try to digest, so that the pain rises from your gut to your heart and from your heart to your head, assimilate things and move forward.. It was a tremendously hard process that, over time, passes although the pain never completely disappears. Step by step, you recover and, in 1995, you lift the European Cup that had eluded Madrid since 1980. The blessed Euroleague. .. The thing is that now they earn as if nothing had happened, but at that time there was no way, it was very complicated. I was lucky to be there with a player like Sabonis, who makes you win, and a coach like Zeljko, who makes you suffer and get angry… but also win. It was a beautiful time because the costumes were also very fun. Sabas was an excellent teammate, a spectacular person, a special guy… and an amazing player. It's just that he played lame and it didn't matter. There were training sessions in which I was almost grateful that he was broken, because if he had not been with us in life, he would have been dominating the NBA. His way of enjoying himself was wonderful because if he could give 20 assists, he was happier than scoring 20 points.. The thing is that we were the Mirlitón band and he had to score 20 if we wanted to win [laughs]. I don't want to offend anyone, but it wasn't the best team that has ever been through Europe, to be honest. Of course not. . It was a pretty neat squad, but limited. We reached the Final Four without being favorites to even advance to the semifinals, but Arlauckas decided to defend. For the first time in his career, he felt like it those two days and he did it very well. From there, everyone gave up. Antúnez was special, Isma Santos did a perfect defensive job… And Sabonis was Sabonis. It was a special year because we all knew that it was the end of a stage, that things were going to happen in the summer, that Chechu (Biriukov) and I were on a tightrope… But we talked and decided. that we were all going to go together as if it were the last chance and, in the end, whatever it had to be. Two years before we had lost to Limoges in the Final Four in Athens after having an incredible tournament, that was the one we should have won, but we took away the one that already seemed like a success having gotten there. You are one of the few who played with Sabonis and Petrovic, the two great references of European basketball at that time. And with Fernando, whom I include in that category. The truth is that in that sense I was very lucky, I always coincided with sensational players. Epi, Jordi Villacampa… The best. In the Zaragoza final, against Olympiacos, you play 17 minutes. That is, you had an important role, but that same summer you decided to retire at only 29 years old.. Why? It's very funny to me that this generates so much curiosity, because for me it was very natural. I didn't decide from one day to the next. In my head, those months were going through many things about everything I had experienced, the good and the bad, personally and professionally.. All. And I decided that I was never going to be fair to basketball because I was no longer going to play how I wanted to play.. I knew I couldn't. The neck injury was serious. I came back and was still the Eurobasket's top rebounder in 1993, but it was never the same as before. Madrid had already told me that Obradovic did not count on me. The conversation lasted 46 seconds.. I was concentrating on the national team in Malaga, they came, told me, I said fine and went back to the room, with Orenga, to take a nap.

How did you handle it after half your life at the club? There are things that perhaps you don't understand at the moment but you do over time.. Maybe I, as a coach or manager, would have made the same decision. A few days ago I met Zeljko and told him: “The coach I speak best about and you are the one who retired me”. The fact is that, although I had quite a few offers, I decided that basketball and I had to shake hands and end up as friends. If I hadn't left him so soon, I would never have returned. The separation lasted 10 years, until you returned as sports director of Real Madrid in 2005. Ten years in which I was very happy and in which time flew by. As a player I was always a very restless person and that sometimes hurt me during my career, because the athlete with too many interests is not always understood, it benefited me to land in real life.. I wasn't wrong retiring so young.. I understand that it is very difficult for people to understand, especially if you can extend your career without problems.. Only my father understood me at first. I remember my mother, with that Andalusian accent of hers and the concern of every mother: “But, son, are you sure you've thought this through?” Don't you regret it? Nothing, zero.. I don't think you should be proud of your career, achievements and that nonsense.. The important thing is much simpler: have you been well? I have been very well, I have learned many things and I am very happy with my life. I make a super positive balance and I don't say that former player's cliché of “basketball has given me everything”. Basketball has given me hugs and it has given me hosts. Both things have helped me, but there is life outside. Why did you decide to return when you already had another happy life away from the hoop? I had been on another planet for 10 years and then Madrid called me and, after so many years, Watching the bulls from the barrier, I thought I had to take the muleta and bullfight myself.. I resisted, they insisted and I took on the challenge. I was there for four years… and I left for another nine. Until they asked you to preside over the ACB in 2018… and you came back again. You are like the scorpion in the fable, you cannot escape your nature. I promise you that I said no twice, but the third time I couldn't refuse anymore. This is my sixth season and, despite the fact that we are experiencing very complicated times with the pandemic, it is one of the best stages of my life. It's funny how unaware you are of how lucky you are with some decisions, because that's what it is: luck. When you are young you insist on finding out if a decision is right or wrong, you weigh negative and positive things before choosing and that is perverse. It's stupid, because when you make a decision you have no idea what is going to happen. No idea. The only thing you have to take into account is what the body asks of you, because whether it turns out right or wrong is a tombola. Not sure if you want to play? So, don't play. Do you feel like playing? Go ahead without thinking too much about it, because no one has any idea if it is going to turn out well or badly. This is how I have lived and I would do it again.