“I remember my first game, on the road, against Efes. Very hard. There weren’t many people in the stands, I remember that I immediately paid for the speed of the game. I had only played a few games in Spain, it was my first season at Estudiantes. I played against Will Solomon. It was hard and exciting at the same time, it was amazing, the atmosphere and the speed of the game.” Three hundred games later, Sergio Rodriguez doesn’t need to look over his shoulder to consider himself lucky. Even more relevant is having reached this milestone despite having spent five seasons (and 358 games) in the NBA. “I have been on great teams and for a long time. The opportunity to play with Estudiantes, Madrid, CSKA and now Olimpia makes me proud. I played for a long time, at a high level, and always to win. In this moment of my career and my life I am happy to be here and I still enjoy myself as this was my first game.”
It was an act of justice that game number 300 will be rememebered for a big win, among other things of great prestige, against his former team, a team he still has a lot of fondness for (and vice versa), a win he was decisive in the outcome. “He and Kyle Hines, coming in, made us think that it could be done,” Coach Ettore Messina said after the game. Sergio obviously knew it would be his 300th game, but he also knew he was three threes away from reaching 500 for his career. The first three was made immediately upon his coming into the game, the second was the one that probably closed the game. The third extended the lead, to 10 points, it was the final dagger. It made the night even more memorable.
And to say that when he started playing at a high level, at Estudiantes, Chacho was a super-fast, creative, imaginative player, who modeled his game after his childhood idols, Jason Williams, White Chocolate, and Allen Iverson, but if he had a flaw that was the outside shooting. And the lack of shooting from outside did not prevent him, in 2006, from being selected by the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the NBA draft. “This is an aspect of my career that makes me very proud. I worked a lot on my shot. When I started playing basketball I was having a lot of fun and having fun was easy. But it takes a lot of work to improve and work on my shot, add the three-point shot, it has given a new dimension to my game, it has made me more dangerous, it has opened up spaces that have generated opportunities for my teammates and for myself,” he says.
Today Rodriguez is a 35-year-old man, married with three children. Olimpia is his fourth EuroLeague team, the third that he has led to the Final Four. If there is a secret, Chacho’s secret is definitely not a mistery: he still competes at these levels because he has fun playing the game, his joy is apparent, his love for the game unquestionable. “Having fun is the biggest part of my game. I prepare myself every day to get to the game in the best conditions, and win it, but when the ball goes up it is all about fun. I love this game,” he confesses.
During his career, he has played over 1,000 games betwwen the national team, national leagues, EuroLeague and the NBA. He was lucky enough to play in New York with Mike D’Antoni, on the team that his idol Iverson played for, Philadelphia, he played and won with Real Madrid (“One of the greatest memories in the EuroLeague was winning it in Madrid with Real Madrid”), won with CSKA Moscow (“The other great memory is the other EuroLeague that I won, in Vitoria”), but right now he doesn’t want to be anywhere else than Milan.
Often, he is referred to as the key man in this part of the club’s history. Coming here, in the summer of 2019, Sergio gave instant credibility to the project. Then Kyle Hines, Gigi Datome, Nicolò Melli, to name just a few, came aboard. “For me, Milan is the perfect place to play basketball, when you sum up the history of the club, the city of Milan, Italy. Playing at the Forum, especially when you face teams like Real Madrid, CSKA, is special. So being here, enjoying every game, every step forward is something special. I would like to finish the job we have begun and confirm ourselves at the levels we played at, last year. Getting to the Final Four at the end of that season, with all the difficulties and restrictions, with no fans, was truly remarkable,” he concludes.
Being one of the two Olimpia captains this season makes him proud. “I feel a great responsibility, like Nik Melli, to help others, and above all to make the people of Milan, the fans, proud of who we are, of how we behave, our actions, on and off the court,” he says. Ironically, he had never been a Captain before. “I was the Captain on the youth teams in Tenerife, in Bilbao, on the various Under 16 and Under 18 national teams, but never as a professional,”, recalls the player who created, without looking for it, a way of interpreting the game, known as “Chachismo”. He must be proud of this too.
