Pau Gasol

Pau Gasol (born 1981) is a famous Catalan basketball player. The son of a medical doctor, Gasol plays in Spain for FC Barcelona, where he has had an average of 11.3 points per game, and in the NBA for the Memphis Grizzlies, where last year, he won the NBA Rookie of the Year award.

Gasol is averaging over 14 points a game with the Grizzlies and has often been compared with fellow European players Toni Kukoc[?] and Dirk Nowitski[?]. He is a member of Spain's national basketball team, and is already considered by many fans in his home country to be the best basketball player ever from Spain. Remarkably, though, he maintains that his top goal in life is to follow in his family's footsteps and become a medical doctor in the future too.

(Name is pronounced ['paw G@'zOl])