Campazzo: “I’d say the NBA is now a closed door for me”
The Argentine point guard, who is currently on vacation in his homeland, reviewed his career on the YouTube program “Clank!”.
Real Madrid officially start the new season on September 21 in Murcia with the Super Cup semi-finals against Barcelona. A competition that the capital team has dominated exclusively since 2018 with six consecutive victories.
The last Super Cup triumph, in 2023, also came in Murcia - a 88-81 win against Unicaja with Facundo Campazzo contributing 19 points and 5 assists to end as the MVP for a third time. It was the first title for the point guard in his third stage as a Madrid player - and the first after returning to the club that he left in November 2020 to try his luck in the NBA with the Denver Nuggets.
The Argentinean reflected on his move to the NBA in an interview with YouTube program Clank! with Juan Pablo Varsky.
“Denver called me. It was complicated, it was the time of the pandemic. I didn’t want to start that season with Madrid because I had the feeling that I was going to leave them. But [Real Madrid president] Florentino Pérez told me that he would help me if I started with the team - if I played the Super Cup, a few more games and then left. And so I accepted,” he recalled.
Campazzo’s first days in Denver
“When I went to the NBA, Florentino wrote to me a lot. He has an aura about him, he imposes a respect that not many people have. At the same time, he gives you a feeling of being looked after at this club. He helped me a lot when I left for the NBA. When I went to Denver, I was super nervous. I met up with him, and he made me feel calm. The payment of the release clause was quite big… and he let me pay it over several years,” continued Campazzo, who considers his time in the North American League to be definitively over: “I think it’s a closed stage for me now. I would say so. I will be 37 years old when my contract with Madrid ends,” he explains. “I feel at home in Madrid.”
Campazzo’s return to the White House was not easy. In November 2022, and after just eight games, the Dallas Mavericks, his second NBA franchise after the Denver Nuggets, decided to let him go. “In my first training sessions there I thought I could do well. I understand the rules of the game. They are cruel, but I understand them. I found out (about the dismissal) from a friend’s message who had seen it on Twitter. The general manager told me that my departure was a decision from above, from Mark Cuban (the owner).”
From the NBA back to the mystique of Madrid
“I knew it could happen. I was hoping that a team would claim me in the next 48 hours, but I was expecting the worst,” recalls the Argentina international, who was starting the season from scratch… but this time at full speed: “I returned to Spain, to Madrid, because it would be easier to negotiate with the teams if I was there than if I was in Dallas.
“My idea was to return to Madrid, but I knew it was difficult because it was December, the season had already started, with all the teams complete. For some reason or another, it wasn’t possible. We tried, but it wasn’t possible, then Red Star (Crvena zvezda) appeared.”
His NBA adventure had its ups and downs. “I didn’t go there for the money, I did it for the dream I had - for the young Facu who wanted to play in the NBA. It was a fantasy,” says the point guard, who played 138 games in the North American League, 130 with Nikola Jokic’s Nuggets.
“He told me to forget what I had learned in European basketball, that the NBA was another sport. And that’s how it is. I had to have a big impact without the ball in my hand,” he says, recalling the trash talking game he experienced with Draymond Green (“He told me, no matter how you defend him, Curry is going to score 30 points, so ask for a change and have someone else defend him”) or his bad feelings in his last days in Colorado: “I preferred to go unnoticed. I didn’t want to play for a minute and a half, running, defending and making mistakes that would put me out of the game and never play again. It was a horrible feeling because I had a better time in training than in actual games.”
A feeling that he forgot, first, at Red Star, in Serbia. And then, in Spain, again at Madrid. His home. “Madrid has a mystique... Historically, in football it is everything. Because of the titles, the players who have played there... but in basketball it also has a very big history for the same reasons. It is beyond any player. It has something that cannot be explained,” he concluded.