{"id":88663,"date":"2024-08-02T15:46:18","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T19:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=88663"},"modified":"2024-08-02T15:46:18","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T19:46:18","slug":"paris-olympics-decorated-spain-rudy-fernandez-retires-after-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/08\/02\/paris-olympics-decorated-spain-rudy-fernandez-retires-after-loss\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris Olympics: Decorated Spain National Retires After Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After Canada eked out <a href=\"https:\/\/olympics.com\/en\/paris-2024\/results\/basketball\/men\/gpa-000600--\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a narrow victory<\/a> over Spain in the Paris Olympics, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/f\/fernaru01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rudy Fernandez<\/a> has officially <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/04\/04\/former-nba-player-and-olympic-medalist-announces-retirement-rudy-fernandez\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">retired from basketball<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In what was his final game, the 39-year-old went scoreless in 15 minutes, going 0-5 from the field. However, fans are anything but proud of the way Fernandez represented his country in Paris. In fact, as a three-time Olympic medalist and a two-time FIBA World Cup gold medalist with Spain, he\u2019s a legend.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">What a legendary career Rudy Fernandez&#8230;\ud83d\udc4f\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8<\/p>\n<p>\ud83e\udd47\ud83e\udd47 FIBA World Cup<br \/>\n\ud83e\udd47\ud83e\udd47\ud83e\udd47\ud83e\udd47 EuroBasket<br \/>\n\ud83e\udd48\ud83e\udd48\ud83e\udd49 Olympic Games<br \/>\n\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6 Euroleague<br \/>\n\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6 ACB<br \/>\n\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6 Copa del Rey<br \/>\n\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6\ud83c\udfc6 Spanish SuperCup <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/epxBtu29Bn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/epxBtu29Bn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Eurohoops (@Eurohoopsnet) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Eurohoopsnet\/status\/1819423633896304972?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 2, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Fernandez\u2019s best statistical performance in Paris came against Greece on Jul. 30.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/olympics.com\/en\/paris-2024\/results\/basketball\/men\/gpa-000300--\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">84-77<\/a> victory \u2014Spain\u2019s only win of the tournament \u2014he recorded 10 points on 3-6 shooting from the field. Two of his field goals, both 3-pointers, came in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"es\">Tremendo Rudy Fern\u00e1ndez de un lado y Toliopoulos del otro.<\/p>\n<p>En esta acci\u00f3n se golpe\u00f3 fuerte Rudy que sale de la cancha en el momento donde era la mejor respuesta de Espa\u00f1a<\/p>\n<p>Espa\u00f1a 71-69 a 5&#8217;20&#8221; <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BvIdbrQEQL\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/BvIdbrQEQL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Javier Luchansky (@Javiluch4) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Javiluch4\/status\/1818233472974049561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 30, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Playing through back pain and a potential head injury, he left it all on the floor.<\/p>\n<h2>Decorated Rudy Fernandez National Announces Retirement<\/h2>\n<p>Outside of his team accolades, Fernandez has been incredibly successful at an individual level. In 2008, he was named the EuroCup Finals MVP, Liga ACB Top Scorer, and Liga ACB Defensive Player of the Year. This was all before he even made it to the NBA, as he was the 24th overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n<p>Hitting the ground running, Fernandez went on to average 10.4 steals and 0.9 steals per game for the Portland Trail Blazers in his rookie season. He also made a scintillating 39.9 percent of his 3s on 5.1 attempts per game. Suffice it to say, he was ahead of his time, setting what was then the NBA rookie record for made 3-pointers (159). This led to him finishing 10th in Rookie of the Year voting and being named to the All-Rookie Second Team.<\/p>\n<p>However, Fernandez\u2019s NBA career quickly fizzled out after that.<\/p>\n<p>He would only play two more seasons with the Blazers before being shipped to the Denver Nuggets as part of Portland\u2019s package for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/f\/feltora01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Raymond Felton<\/a>. After just one injury-shortened season with the Nuggets, he returned to Spain. Almost immediately, Fernandez was back in the saddle. In his first season with Real Madrid, he made the All-EuroLeague First Team and won the Spanish Supercup MVP award.<\/p>\n<p>Now a three-time EuroLeague champion, seven-time Liga ACB champion, and nine-time Spanish SuperCup winner, he leaves the game as perhaps the best Spanish player in hoops history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Canada eked out a narrow victory over Spain in the Paris Olympics, Rudy Fernandez has officially retired from basketball. In what was his final game, the 39-year-old went scoreless in 15 minutes, going 0-5 from the field. However, fans are anything but proud of the way Fernandez represented his country in Paris. In fact, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":88670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,1608,62,3,23],"tags":[1052,2908],"class_list":["post-88663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-olympics","category-basketball","category-nba","category-news","category-trailblazers","tag-olympics","tag-rudy-fernandez"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}