Bologna, Sept. 20 –
A coach honored by the two worlds like nobody else Italian, Sergio Scariolo adds his fourth continental laurel with Spain to this appendix of the 21-22 sports season. For the first time an Italian club will be led by a reigning European and World champion coach. Months of a major design revival, of an attention to detail that in today’s basketball, if left to their own devices, risk making everything vain. A long season whose door was open to all: 5 competitions, 4 finals, 3 titles. Back in Europe after having climbed to the top of Everest from both sides (FIBA Spain – NBA Toronto) his new adventure started immediately from solid roots, from the heroic days of the Italian Supercup over Milan, tending body and spirit of a newly built Segafredo, towards that trophy that had been missing since 1995.
Not even the obstacles caused by fate would later break the Bianconeri tree, founded precisely on roots layered toward the Coppa Italia in Pesaro, the only stage of which Scariolo did not see the final, until the first European laurel of the season. The Eurocup came as a wave of emotionalism written like this, pairing the Brescia coach with the late Dusan Ivkovic, as the only two to have won European Championships, World Cups and EuroCups in their careers. Seen from the outside it’s a detail, seen from the inside it’s everything that flows between heart, brain and guts. The sporting difference between living or dying. All according to script, in the serious and reassuring formalism of one who finds himself, as master of his games, in a noble city temple projected into a season finale painted by first place in the standings and the subsequent Scudetto final. The Statistical Bignami in the black-and-white garb thus returns a 26 out of 30 in the regular season, an 8 out of 12 in the post, a 1 out of 2 in the Italian Cup, a 15 out of 22 in the Eurocup and the 3 out of 3 in the Supercup. In short, one has seen worse. Then wearing the Red Furies’ cassock, in continental competition 8 games honored with 7 successes: 4 to win Group A, as many for the Berlin ride. With that one in the defeat box so reminiscent of the chicken of statistics: unremarkable. If anything, singular that it happened against Belgium’s Ismael Bako, 10 for him that night. Already forgiven.
