Jose Juan Barea, known as JJ, decided to retire from playing basketball.
The Puerto Rican player, after being eliminated from his country’s championship playoffs with the Cangrejeros de Santurce, has decided to hang up his cleats. It thus closes, at 38 years old, a very long career with 831 games in the NBA and the 2011 title with the Dallas Mavericks. In fact, the Mavs were the team where he played the most (2006 to 2011 and 2014 to 2020) with an interlude in Minnesota. Barea also is one of the players with the most games started from the bench in league history.
Barea attributed the cause of retirement to mental rather than physical fatigue: “I gave the sport everything I had,” he explained, I am mentally exhausted., which is why I will take a break from basketball.”
Based on his words, then, a period totally away from basketball is expected. The coaching career, therefore, can wait. Surely Barea will have no difficulty finding a place on some NBA coaching staff in the future, who knows if it will be in Dallas, which had already sought him out in the past also because of the special relationship he has with Luka Doncic.
