Former Utah Jazz PG Raul Lopez Retires From Basketball

Raul Lopez, the Spanish point guard that the Utah Jazz drafted ahead of Tony Parker, is retiring from professional basketball.

One of the most controversial players in Utah Jazz history called it a career this past week, and I’m not talking about Deron Williams.

Raul Lopez, the Spanish point guard who, unfortunately, is best known as part of what many consider one of the team’s worst draft night blunders, is retiring from professional basketball. The 36-year-old has spent the last five years with Bilbao Basket of the ACB League.

On the court, he was a key contributor to one of the Jazz franchise’s most memorable teams–the 2003-04 squad that, despite being picked to win just seven games, finished 42-40 and nearly made the playoffs. This came despite the fact that Andrei Kirilenko, Matt Harpring, Carlos Arroyo and Raja Bell were the team’s best players.

Lopez spent three years with the Jazz, the first of which was spent watching from the sidelines–a grim premonition of things to come. In 113 career games with the team, he averaged a respectable 6.5 points and four assists per game as the back-up point guard.

However, most Jazz fans will always remember him as the player that was drafted instead of a certain future Hall of Famer from France who would fall to the San Antonio Spurs four picks later.

Just one year before Kirilenko, their ’99 Euro stash pick, exploded onto the scene as a rookie, the Jazz found themselves torn between two other Europeans in the 2001 NBA Draft. One was Lopez, a lightning-quick Spaniard. The other was the aforementioned Frenchman–Tony Parker.

In a move that will live in infamy, the Jazz went with the former. To add insult to the injury of passing on Parker, players like Gilbert Arenas, Jamaal Tinsley, Gerald Wallace and Mehmet Okur were also still on the board when Lopez was selected.

However, at the time, Lopez was viewed as a player with star potential. His vision, his handles and his ability to distribute as a pass-first point guard had visions of John Stockton dancing in people’s heads. He would spend another year abroad, then come to the NBA where he would become Stockton’s understudy and, eventually, his successor.

That was the plan anyway. Unfortunately, as John Lennon once said, life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

Lopez got a heavy dose of life in action when he tore his right ACL– twice–before he ever suited up for the Jazz. He famously came to Utah with tissue from a cadaver in his knee from one of the surgeries. If that didn’t make him the team’s answer to the walking dead, the multiple surgeries to come would.

After a strong rookie season, Lopez required further knee surgery. It would delay his start to the 2004-05 season. Then, just two months after returning to the floor, he injured his other knee. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Jazz eventually included him as part of the multi-team trade that brought Greg Ostertag back to Utah.

If trading the player who was your presumed point guard of the future for an aging Ostertag isn’t depressing, I don’t know what is. No offense, Greg. Still, while many in Jazz Nation continue to lament the strange saga, the story has a happy ending for Lopez.

He would return to Europe after leaving the Jazz and went on to enjoy a lengthy career in Spain and Russia. He even won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing as a member of the Spanish national team, with whom he also won gold at EuroBasket 2009.

His body may have prevented him from reaching his full potential, but he had an incredible career nonetheless.

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While the Utah faithful never really got to see the player that reminded some of old No. 12, I know I’ll always remember Lopez for what he was actually able to accomplish despite his physical limitations. For that, he’ll forever have this Jazz fan’s respect.

Even if he isn’t Tony Parker.

Photo by Hodyachih, via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Cropped from original image.