A year after stepping down as Alba Berlin head coach, Aito Garcia Reneses returns to professional basketball. The 75-year-old coaching legend has signed with the Catalan promoted team in the Spanish ACB, Basquet Girona, for the coming season.
Reneses trained Alba from 2017 to 2021 and announced last summer that he would take a sabbatical of at least one year. He spent most of the past season away from basketball, traveling and in his home country, but also taking part in various events organized by the youth department of Joventut Badalona.
Now he is returning to the best national league in Europe, which he has shaped like no other in recent decades. His new club has just been promoted to the ACB for the first time. Basquet Girona was only founded in 2014 by then NBA star Marc Gasol, who once had his big breakthrough as a professional in the Catalan city.
Last season, the now 37-year-old club president played for the team as a center and helped with promotion. It is not yet known whether he will continue his career. Reneses helped Gasol’s older brother Pau make his professional debut at FC Barcelona in the late 1990s and had a major impact on the careers of many great Spanish basketball players.
