“Fernando Martin was our best public relations person” | Relief

To read this article, a couple of generations will have to do an imagination exercise, and all previous generations will have to do a memory exercise. In the 80s, on Calle Campoamor in Madrid, very close to the Alonso Martinez metro station, there was a bar where you could find something that was not available anywhere else in the city: the NBA. I can’t watch on TV, there are no mobile phones.if you’re lucky, you can find a poster in a magazine, but it’s practically nothing the same.

However, there, in a room of about 200 square meters, there is a huge screen on which matches are projected, which are treasures. “We went there basketball players watching the NBA, which we knew existed and was great, but nothing more. These people received the videos from a guy who recorded them on a TV camera in the USA. The guy took the videotape, went to the airport, gave it to someone who was traveling, and they brought it here.. They took it here, and the ribbon was worth gold. It was projected on a screen of dubious quality, now young people won’t last even ten minutes, because imagine the match being recorded on camera in front of the TV,” explains Fernando Laura, sports journalist and photographer, a regular visitor to the bar, which opened in the 80s years (no one seems to know exactly when) and closed in 2005.

“This happened shortly after the emergence of rugby pubs, which already existed in Madrid. So I started the group with the idea of ​​creating a similar basketball pub. There were seven of us. When we started looking for places to install, they were all very expensive and not the best. We couldn’t afford it, but then we saw one owned by another boy who also played basketball, in the lower categories and who owned an old dairy farm that had been closed for 30 years,” explains Jorge Trenco, one of the owners of a very successful bar , who, like all his partners, had a relationship with Madrid basketball. Coaches and players came together to create a stadium with very specific requirements: “We combined alcohol and sports, which were antagonistic things, and they seemed to go well together.“.

The ability to watch American films in Madrid was a huge challenge, since at that time in Spain and the United States the same technology was not even used on television. This means that, as Laura says, many matches are screen camera recordings. Juan de Miguel ran a company that converted American films into others that could be seen on the Spanish system. His role in this story is key.

“They brought them to Videoreport and we converted them from 525 lines to 625. Those who went to the USA brought tapes: Victor de la Serna, Lolo Sainz, Mario Pesquera, the people themselves from Rebote, many coaches. We converted what they received. Aito also brought a little, and Antonio Diaz Miguel brought a lot, of course, he brought the most“Explains De Miguel, who at the time owned another similar basketball pub. The list of names, he says, included four people who became coaches of the Spanish national team. Basketball was almost a family affair, everyone knew each other and helped each other. There was something tribal about it, and that tribe had a social center: the Rebote pub.

“I didn’t become a member by accident because some of the people who founded it were my friends, like Pablo Casado, who died, and Antonio Blanco, who was my friend from a young age. This is true, All representatives of the basketball world passed by, everyone who came to play in Madrid walked. It was one of the first places where we got to see some of the NBA and stuff like that and some of what was to come, and the truth is we had a great time there.” This comes from Pepu Hernandez, a member of the tribe club and also a former coach of the national team.

Basketball Social Club

“When the ACB matches were over, everyone went there. Some coach was going to prepare some matches, even in special classes without spectators, because there were videos of some of the teams they were going to compete with. The truth is that this development was not only entertaining, so to speak, but you could also watch and even practice basketball.“, Pepu explains.

Players, coaches, referees and journalists all fraternize there. “Everyone who had anything to do with basketball was there, It was a place where you could do anything, give interviews, if they saw you on Rebot, they treated you with great attention.it was a place where there were people involved in basketball, those who were introduced to basketball outside the home,” recalls Fernando Laura.

“It was something special, one of our best clients was Fernando Martin, the year before he left for the NBA, he was another one, there was no discrimination based on ego. We had the Rebote Awards ceremony, which was held once a year, and all the representatives of Spanish basketball came to it.There were ten or twelve awards, almost like the Oscars of basketball in Madrid,” explains owner Trenko.

“There were coaches’ meetings, there were technical issues and criteria that were developed there with the cooperation of many, because in the end the coaches of all the teams and the selectors arrived there. It makes me laugh because I talk about it a lot with coaches too. Coaches at the time had no resources, nothing to turn to, very few things to do, and we were hungry for information.. Now technology really gives them absolutely all the information,” says Pepu.

“There came a point when ACB teams called us to see the players they wanted to sign. This happened to Essie Hollis, who was the best player in the ACB for the years he played.” Vitoria managers came to watch his video before signing him.“Remembers Trenko, who tells a similar anecdote about some of John Pinone’s recordings at Villanova University.

This makes sense. What you see on these screens is not only the best basketball in the world, which the NBA continues to be today, but something much more. Since then, the difference has not stopped narrowing; today there are Europeans who not only play there, but are superstars. At that moment they were not even close, basketball players who play for the Lakers, Celtics or Sixers are more like aliens than the children who play every Sunday in Magariños with Estudiantes or in ” Palacio with Real Madrid.

“We started to see them moving there and The person who caught my attention the most was Julius Erving.. Moreover, I’ve seen some pictures of Julius Erving lately and it continues to amaze me, mind you, when we’ve been able to see other things that we thought we’d never see, but what do you want me to tell you? Perhaps I will remain a little nostalgic for the spectacles that impressed me when I was about 18,” says the former national team coach.

Although for many the 80s are “Magic” and “The Bird,” it is not for nothing that Pepa’s idol was shared by many others. “Our hero was Dr. J. That dunk from behind the board is etched in our memories.. All tickets for the game of Dr. Jay’s team were sold out,” explains Fernando Laura.

Of course, they watched the games, but they didn’t follow the championship. There was no way, it was hard to tell if what they were showing was something from the playoffs or a regular league game. The audience commented on the performances, someone who has traveled around the USA could boast of great knowledge, but without frills, what appears on this huge screen is alien to almost everyone present, but whoever comes falls in love with what they see. .

“We wanted everyone to experience it at the same time and be able to comment; we had technicians and journalists like Manolo Saucedo. Previously, after each game there was a gathering, where on one side there were about 150 people, because there was almost no room for us.“, says the owner.

Flirt on the rebound

A lot of basketball, the anecdotes in this sense are almost endless, but it is worth remembering that Pub Rebote was, that is, a bar, and you come to the bar for basketball, but it has other functions in life.

“It was a joy because it connected a lot (laughs). At that time I was lonely. You came together because you knew the people, and we all came together there,” Laura says. Rebote must have been the bar with the highest average height in the city, for obvious reasons. “Everyone there was big, well, except for the manager, who “He was very short,” the journalist concludes. “The tall girls went there to see what was there, there were those from Canoe who were in charge of the Spanish league at the time,” Laura explains.

“I had already started going to the NBA and they brought me sneakers that weren’t here because John Smith was here and, of course, I showed up with some of the Converse shoes that Dr. J wore, and people were amazed, they were flirting alone.“, says Laura, who is a joke-telling machine, with grace. She bought these sneakers, which flirted with themselves, after an interview with Michael Jordan in Chicago for Gigantes magazine (“he behaved with us like a real gentleman”), a visit, about which he later gave a lecture in Rebot. He was a photographer, and from his camera a legendary photograph appeared of Sabonis breaking the board that decorated the establishment. This also brought him some free beer.

As in any human group, there were graduations at night. “Everything went in order, the players were most involved. Fernando Martin and you jumped into the water, you knew you had to wait a little while for the water to return to normal. and you’ve already done your job,” says the photographer, who was a personal friend of the first Spaniard to cross the screen and enter the NBA.

Martin was a special person, everyone there remembers him. “His character was a little reserved, he was not open, but there he managed to open up, there he was relaxed and calm.. It was awkward, but he was another one,” Trenko says.

The Madrid center, “the best public relations man” Rebote had, took his bags and drove to Portland so his friends at the pub could see him on screen. Today is without a doubt a key moment in the history of Spanish sport, but perhaps the 38 years since then have softened a little what actually happened.

“Fernando went where the basketball people were, but you know he was a guy who didn’t want to show himself too much in public. Of course he went. I remember the farewell tribute that was paid to him, which I attended. It is logical that Rebot. I am telling you things as I saw them. When Fernando Martin goes to the US to play in the NBA, he leaves happy, does what he has to do, but no one else is happy.. They were not happy either in their club, or in the Spanish national team they were not happy. I’m telling you how we felt at that moment and how I still feel it. The farewell was not pleasant, some said, where did this guy go? We paid him a final tribute and I think that was one of the little joys he received,” concludes Pepu Hernandez.

The pub closed in 2005 after many years of success. Pay TV came along, the Internet came along, and some of the things that happened there were no longer original. Times have moved on differently, but the voices of all those consulted are still illuminated by memories. They are just memories or nothing more than memories. Attempts have been made to illustrate this article with photographs, but the owners do not store them. There were no cell phones, of course, so it was special to see Dr. J flying every evening with a beer in his hand.