There’s something inspirational about watching 35-year-old Pablo Prigioni dart around the basketball court as if he were a kid a couple of years out of college.

As the oldest rookie in the NBA, Prigioni is a role model for the middle-aged. He is a sports figure who by his very existence sends a message that it is not too late for the rest of us to train for that marathon we’ve always wanted to run or apply to that graduate school we always dreamed of attending.

Yet as much as the Knicks point guard likes the idea of inspiring others, he has a confession: Playing in the NBA was never something high on his to-do list.

“It was not my dream,” Prigioni said after a recent practice. “So many of my friends, they had done anything they could do to come over here and play in the NBA. But to me, I was happy with European basketball.”

via Barbara Barker of Newsday