
Former Gopher Star Leslie Knight Talks Adjusting To Life In Spain During Outbreak
Leslie Knight grew up in Hopkins, and now plays professional basketball in Spain, which she now calls it her year-round home.

Knight’s senior season earned the 6-foot-1 forward a chance to play in a Swiss pro league. Then, for the 2009-10 season, she signed with a Division 2 pro team in Spain, and she has played there since: Four seasons in Division 2, six seasons in Division 1 and this past, abbreviated season with a Division 2 team in Madrid.
“It was exciting to sign with a team in Spain that first year, because I had minored in Spanish at the university,” Knight said. “I saw it as a great chance to learn the culture and improve my Spanish.”
She didn’t see Spain becoming home, which is what it is now. She married Juan Manuel Gonzalez in a legal ceremony in 2017 and they have an apartment in Madrid’s La Latina district, not far from the Manzanares River.
Knight’s Madrid team was enjoying an excellent season through March 7; then came a shutdown of the schedule, followed quickly by a shutdown of the city.
What was the virus situation on Good Friday? “We’re told it’s slightly better, but we still had over 600 new dead in Spain yesterday,” she said.
Her husband, called “Juanma,” is in the middle of it, as a police officer in the huge suburb of Las Rozas.
“Juanma gets home every night around 11, takes a shower, and then we have dinner,” Knight said. “That’s late even in Madrid, where people go out for dinner at 10 at night.