San Antonio Adds Another Olympian

Fabricio Oberto wore a sad smile while speaking longingly of the luxury Porsche SUV he had to dispose of in Spain earlier this summer. His new ride is a four-door Dodge station wagon more functional than flamboyant.

His villa in the lively city of Valencia is empty now, too, his wife and baby daughter having already abandoned the Mediterranean coast to relocate deep in the heart of Texas.

The celebrity status that the 6-foot-10 Oberto enjoyed in Argentina and Spain is gone, too, replaced by virtual anonymity in the country he now calls home. On the few occasions he is recognized in San Antonio, he is pleasantly surprised by the preponderance of Spanish-speaking Spur fans.

“It’s like a new life,” Oberto said. “New country, and in the family we have a new member. I keep telling people I feel like I’m 22 again.”

Oberto, 30, sat at a picnic table outside a conference center where the NBA was conducting its rookie orientation program and cheerfully looked ahead to joining the defending champion Spurs.

Not many in America have heard of Oberto, who schooled Vlade Divac in the 2002 World Championship gold medal game and stood his own against Tim Duncan in the Olympic semifinals in Athens.

With NBA training camps set to open Oct. 4, the Spurs might have improved more than any other team. But while most of the focus has centered on the signings of free agents Michael Finley and Nick Van Exel, the move that might end up helping most was adding the big man from Argentina whose soft hands, accurate touch and superior basketball IQ will add another low-post weapon to a roster that already includes the most fundamentally sound big man in the world.

“I don’t know if I am a mystery. I don’t have any secret weapons or anything,” Oberto said. “I just work hard every day. That is the philosophy of my life.”

Oberto first tried to make it to the NBA with the Knicks during the summer of 1999, spending much of his 10 days in New York on the receiving end of rants from then-coach Jeff Van Gundy. Oberto was stunned when the Knicks told him they wouldn’t be bringing him to Boston with their summer-league team, and he looks back on it as the worst days of his professional career.

“I realized then, I think I was set up,” said Oberto, whose Knicks’ tryout kept him from playing on Argentina’s national team in the 1999 Olympic qualifier. “They didn’t tell me until the last day, and I felt really bad about that. They didn’t tell me I needed to play a couple more years. If they had said that, I could have accepted their point.”

Dejected, he signed with Tau Ceramica in Spain.

The Spurs tried to sign him late in the summer of 1999, general manager R.C. Buford recalled, but missed the deadline for Oberto’s buyout.

Oberto spent two seasons with Tau and three with Pamesa Valencia in Spain, rejoining his national team in the summers and winning a silver medal at the 2002 World Championships in Indianapolis and a gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

An affordable buyout clause allowed Oberto to become a free agent at the start of this summer, and the Spurs grabbed him at the last second after he was set to sign with Memphis.

Indiana also expressed interest but instead decided to sign Lithuanian guard Sarunas Jasikevicius -- another seasoned European pro making the jump to the NBA.

The Spurs were ecstatic to land Oberto, especially after Coach Gregg Popovich -- as assistant on the U.S. national team in 2002, 2003 and 2004 -- had watched him carve up the competition in international tournaments.

At the World Championship gold medal game in Indianapolis, Oberto outscored Divac, 28-3, his defense frustrating the Serbian center into one of the poorest performances of his career -- one-for-10 shooting from the field, one for six from the line. A disputed non-call at the end of regulation forced overtime, and Argentina went on to lose to Yugoslavia.

“I still haven’t seen a tape of that game, only when they’ve showed highlights in Argentina, and almost everyone starts crying. But it taught us a lot of things for the Olympic games,” Oberto said.