Gasol brothers share the NBA experience

Had Pau and Marc Gasol grown up in, say, Indiana, it would be easy to imagine the brothers playing endless games of 1-on-1 in the driveway.

But the NBA's most successful set of brothers grew up in Barcelona, Spain, so the experience must have been different.

Actually, no, Marc said after his Memphis Grizzlies beat the Bulls on Monday at the United Center. The Gasols had a very American-style basketball background.

"It's true. My grandma used to have a backyard and we put a hoop, a shaky hoop, up there," Marc said. "We used to just shoot at it. We shot at it so many times, we broke it. We had to get a better one, because that one wasn't good at all.

"We put up a better one and kept shooting and shooting at it. That's what we did. Of course, we played a little soccer. We were no good at it. Even though it's the sport I love watching the most, I'm not good at it at all."

This year Pau and Mark became the first brothers to start in the same NBA All-Star Game. They split the regular-season meetings this year. The Bulls won in Memphis on Dec. 19, then the Grizzlies turned the tables with a 101-91 victory Monday at the United Center. Marc scored a game-high 23 points.

"He's playing well, got himself going with a lot of open shots in the third quarter," Pau said after the game. "He played a good game overall."

After finishing a set of four games in five nights, the Bulls did not practice Tuesday. They departed for a three-game road trip, which begins Wednesday in Philadelphia.

Five years separates Pau and Marc in age, so Marc acknowledged the brothers are closer as adults than they were as kids.

"Once I went back to Barcelona to play professional, we became a lot closer," Marc said. "We became closer and closer each day that has passed."

Growing up, Pau was the basketball prodigy, while Marc was more of a spectator - statistician, actually.

"I'm probably the guy who has seen him play the most in his life," Marc said. "I used to be the guy who did all the stats for his team, so all the players after the game would come up to me and ask me like, 'What did I do? What did I do?' Guys asked me to pad their stats a little bit more and I said I couldn't do that."

When Pau began his NBA career with Memphis in 2001, the whole family moved to Tennessee, which meant Marc finished his high school career in the United States.

Even he admits he was a long way from becoming an NBA prospect.

"I was able to pick up a lot of stuff, even though I didn't think I would play in the NBA by any means," Marc said. "But I'm a really curious guy and I pay attention to a lot of things. I was just picking up what Pau was saying or what he was going through at the time.

"I got to know the city as well. A lot of crazy stuff happened through five years and I ended up in Memphis again and playing for the same team, in the city that I already knew and I lived in Pau's apartment and it's like I never left that place. Ever since then, it's been great."

Marc chose to play professionally in Barcelona, rather than attend college in the U.S., and was drafted in 2007 by the Los Angeles Lakers. The brothers were traded for each other when Pau moved to the Lakers in 2008. And, yes, Marc moved into Pau's vacated Memphis apartment.

"I'm not going to say how much he made me pay for rent," Marc said with a laugh.

Monday's game was frustrating for Pau. The Bulls are going through a tough stretch with three of their top five scorers - Jimmy Butler, Derrick Rose and Taj Gibson - sidelined by injury.

Rather than gloat about the win, though, Marc paid tribute to his brother in the visitors' locker room.

"Pau has a game that's impossible to imitate," he said. "He's so finesse and so skilled, it's impossible to imitate.

"Honestly, I'm a big fan of the game. I've never seen a player his size who has so many moves, so many counters and it's impossible. His length, his size, his skills - I mean, you can't teach that."

• Get the latest Bulls news via Twitter by following @McGrawDHBulls.