In the Shadow of a Superstar: The Story of Jason Peters and Marc Gasol (Part II)

The relationship between Marc Gasol and Jason Peters is one that will last a lifetime and one that started when Gasol first came over to the Peters’ household.

The first time Gasol came over to Jason Peters’ house was when Gasol’s parents were out of town. Being from Spain, his parents occasionally had to go home for a family affair or something similar to that. Thus, Marc’s parents told him to stay with someone while his parents were in their homeland.

The Peters family wasn’t used to giants stepping foot in their home. The phrase “one size fits all” certainly lost its meaning when Gasol was stomping his way around the house.

“We were always scared to death, because he was so tall. He would stand right next to a ceiling fan,” said Peters.

“And it would be spinning, and I was like ‘Ah Marc, you can’t do that.’ He was so used to it that it didn’t faze him, you know? And so we had this running joke about ‘Marc, when you go through doorways, watch out. When the fans are on, watch out.’ And it was constant, we couldn’t get over it,” he continued.

Marc the Jokester

Finally the day comes where school has ended. Marc’s parents have already gone back to Spain. Summer has started, and Gasol is headed back to Spain.

Gasol’s chauffeur for the day, Jason Peters, is in his car and ready to drive Gasol to Memphis International Airport and say his goodbyes. Gasol walks out to the car, ducks his head under the roof of the car and hops in the vehicle. Seconds later, Marc realizes he forgot something.

“Oh wait, coach I forgot one thing,” the seven-foot Spaniard said.

Gasol runs through the garage and into the house, gone for just a few minutes according to Peters.

“I was thinking nothing of it,” said Peters.

Coming in a hurry through the door, Marc hits his head on the doorframe and falls down on the ground, hands covering his forehead. Gasol lay on his knees, taken down like Joe Frazier in The Sunshine Showdown.

“Oh my gosh!” Peters fearfully yelled.

He immediately got out of the car and sprinted over to Gasol as if he were back in Todd Snowden Gymnasium leading his varsity Owls on a fast break. Peters, now in close proximity to Gasol, could see the gruesome red smeared across his forehead and spreading to his enormous hands. Gasol looked up at his coach. Jason Peters was stunned.

“He looks up, and he had gone into my refrigerator and gotten some ketchup and smeared it all over his forehead to play a prank on me,” said Peters.

That was the Marc Gasol that Jason Peters got to know. The jokester.

“He really has a good sense of humor,” Peters added.

Marc Gasol solidified his place as the team’s jokester in Coach Peters’ head in his senior year.

The Lynx traveled to familiar territory for a basketball tournament: snowy Carbondale, Illinois. The whole team was loaded up on the bus, snow falling from the sky. Peters was still in the hotel lobby taking care of business, and the team was about to head out for the first game of the tournament.

Marc Gasol is sitting right by the bus driver, waiting for his coach to make the cold and pretty lengthy trek from the lobby to the bus. Peters shuffles his feet through the snow and approaches the bus, still roughly 20 feet away. The bus driver opens the door and all of a sudden whoooom! Gasol stands up and throws a snowball that smacks his coach right in the kisser. Down goes Peters—well, not for long. The irate coach made Gasol get out of the bus with the whole team watching, and forced him to stand up against the bus with his arms out wide.

Peters told him, “I’m not going to play you in the game unless you do this.”

The Lynx coach made his 7-foot Big-Mac eating center lean against the bus defenseless while Peters just made snowball after snowball, almost incessantly.

Boom! Boom!  Peters pegged him over and over again.

“And you couldn’t miss him because he was so fat,” Peters humorously recalled.

Everyone inside the bus was laughing, but eventually Gasol had had enough, and the beast was unleashed. The Lynx center began to fire snowballs right back at his coach, and moments later the rest of the team started coming out of the bus. Before it’s all said and done, there was a massive snowball fight going on one hour before the basketball game.

State Championship State of Mind

A few hours later, they loaded back onto the bus. They had just defeated Pickneyville (Ill) High School. Perhaps the snowball fight helped quite a bit.

Gasol’s senior year, Lausanne made it to the championship game.

“We won the district, we won the region. And so we made it to the state and finished runner up to Brentwood,” said Peters.

It wasn’t a fluke. Brentwood had the talent to take down the Lynx. The Bruins had their own 6-foot-10 giant who was more athletic than Gasol: Brandan Wright. Fast-forward 14 years later, and they’re both playing for the Memphis Grizzlies. The two big men who battled in Murfreesboro are now banging on the block together in Memphis, Tennessee.

Next: The Story of Jason Peters and Marc Gasol (Part 1)

Part III coming soon…