Bologna –
The presentation of the Finali Scudetto 2022/23 by the Italian Basketball League was held today at the Unipol Tower in Bologna. These are the words of Virtus Segafredo Bologna CEO Luca Baraldi: “First of all I would like to thank Unipol for its hospitality and for what it does for us since it is also our partner and allows us to see Bologna from above and it is always fascinating.
I emphasize that we have a lot of desire to win but I think they will be moments of great spectacle because for the first time, both we and Milan, two teams in the Euroleague, are competing for the Scudetto. Also from this point of view we no longer have the excuse to say that we are not a Euroleague team, so we have to have even more motivation in confronting a great team like Olimpia that we esteem for what it has done during this championship and on the edge of the game had the motivation and the strength to overtake us. We have to be competitive, the guys are fine, although I would have preferred to play the first two games in Bologna but the players have told me that it’s okay and so we let Milan start the operations to approach the scudetto. We start with a lot of enthusiasm and I invite everyone to participate, directly or indirectly, because it will be a great sporting spectacle and a pride for our country as well as for the institutions of basketball and Italian sport.
Our arena? I think it is perfect for a city like Bologna even though “temporary” is a term I often struggle to understand. The city deserves to have this kind of facility, with almost 10,000 seats, because it is a moment of great entertainment in Bologna as well as in Italy and Europe. We have to work, and I subscribe to what Stavropoulos said, to improve and to be an example for many others: if there are two teams like Virtus and Olimpia that carry out this policy it is a good thing, it is an asset for Italian sport and basketball. Here in Bologna we can do so much precisely because we are in this city that facilitates this type of policy because it is the home of basketball.
Both of us have a good chance to play our chances to aspire to this title: Milan I think should have the respect it deserves for coming first with the home court factor and the advantages that this brings from a competitive point of view. Starting at home means getting off to a good start. In the last two seasons this has not brought great advantages because the first year we won and last year they won, so this is all salt and pepper being put inside this set of games.
What I can say is that we have the players motivated and excited to play these games, even though most of them are used to playing these kinds of games-they feel like playing.
The result is quite open and we feel moderately optimistic: from a performance standpoint, I think we can be there.”
This is thelink from where you can buy tickets for Game 3 (Wednesday, 14) and Game 4 (Friday, 16).
