Naturalized center Ra Gun-a, born Ricardo Ratliffe in the United States, said Tuesday he hopes to continue playing with the South Korean national basketball team even after an early disappointing exit at the ongoing 19th Asian Games.
“Actually, my contract is up with the Korean national team, so I’m not really sure if they’re going to try to extend or just let me walk,” Ra said in a mixed-zone interview after a quarterfinal match against China at Hangzhou Olympic Sports Centre Gymnasium in Hangzhou, China.
“Hopefully, I can continue being on this team, helping them grow, and, you know, we get our guys back to being healthy, so we can come out here and play our best basketball again.”
The 34-year-old center was naturalized as a Korean in 2018 and has been playing as a key national team member since then.
He became the first naturalized basketball player of non-Korean descent on the South Korean national team.
Ra spearheaded the South Korean team to earn the bronze medal in the 2018 Asian Games. En route to the semifinals, his 199-centimeter frame played a major role in helping his team overcome the Philippines, led by Filipino-American NBA guard Jordan Clarkson.
Five years later, however, Ra’s presence was not enough to get past the towering Chinese team at the Hangzhou Asian Games. South Korea was routed 84-70 by the host country in the quarterfinals, while the U.S.-born center scored the team-leading 14 points and took seven rebounds.
Ra said he and his teammates did their best to get a semifinal berth, but they weren’t given enough time for the game after their last qualification match against Bahrain on Monday night.
“We got a lot of guys banged up, a lot of guys injured, and we had a tough game last night to try to even be able to compete with these guys,” he said. “So I feel like we gave it all we had, but it just wasn’t enough today.”
With the quarterfinal defeat, South Korea was knocked out of medal contention for the first time in 17 years. The country has made podium finishes at every Asiad since 2010, when it lost to China in the final and earned silver.
South Korea’s basketball won the Asian Games title in 2014 and bronze in 2018.
Source: Yonhap News Agency