Bologna –
Statements by General Manager Paolo Ronci during the presentation of the 23/24 season.
“I would like to make a premise. Luca and I have been working together for many years, going into our 11th year. In 2019 I was lucky enough to have been called here by Dr. Zanetti and Luca, so we start from a mutual knowledge of many years and a sharing of values and working methods that have allowed us to have in these 4/5 years different Virtus, with different technical staffs, but that each brought home some trophies. I think it is an important working base and a guarantee of solidity towards the whole Virtus world and the insiders, who recognize the presence and positioning of Virtus at important levels. The roster for next season is composed of players who have very strongly wanted to wear the Virtus jersey. I give an example for everyone about Dobric: we started talking to him after the games we played against Red Star expressing great interest in what was the path Virtus had taken. He is a player who after so many years spent in the Red Star team in Belgrade, in his home country, for his first experience abroad wanted Virtus. From there we can say that there are players with Euroleague experience. It is a roster that maybe lost some important names, however, it is a roster that has Euroleague experience. I want to read some numbers so we can realize this with objective data. Cordinier played 19 Euroleague games, Belinelli 97, Pajola 29, Smith 64, Dobric has 153 Euroleague appearances, Lundberg 68, Shengelia 222, Hackett 275, Mickey 136, Polonara 125, Abass has 42 Euroleague appearances. If we exclude Bruno Mascolo and Devontae Cacok, who just arrived in Europe a few months ago, we have a roster that has proven players. We believe that it is a roster that is balanced in roles, with a physicality that allows us to be competitive with what are the parameters of the Euroleague game, we experienced that last year. Above all, we wanted to think of each player with a defined role, one that feels important within the team. Sometimes the disgruntled created some problems, instead we feel that this roster is a roster with a lot of clarity in roles. I would like to say something that is talked about a lot. The players who come to Virtus have all been players who have been wanted by the coaches of the day, then it is clear that the coaches indicate preferences to us. We have almost always been able to please with number one on the list, and when we have not been able to we have had number two come to Bologna.There are no players who were invented by Luca Baraldi or Paolo Ronci without the head coach of the moment being aware of them.”
“It’s a team that has some younger and fresher players. We saw last year in the Euroleague that this is a key aspect. Another data that we analyzed with depth is the approach to the games. We had very good performances with important teams, we remember the Barcelona win, we won in Madrid, at home against Fenerbahce, Maccabi, we had two very high level home games with Efes and Olympiacos. Sometimes, on the other hand, we fell against mid- to lower-ranked teams, and it happened to us in the Italian league, too, where we left on the road the first place in the regular season, which this year turned out to be very important.
A different physicality and freshness of the roster can be an element that leads us to approach “second tier” games, let’s call them that, differently. We all remember Napoli, Scafati, Trieste, Treviso cost us first place, or the Italian Cup final against Brescia, the home game against Zalgiris that could have been a watershed in the Euroleague. If we can face them with a different mentality from the point of view of players who can be employed, we felt it could be an important key to build on last season’s experience. Dobric, Cordinier, and Smith are players with great physical impact. The coaching staff wanted Cacok because he is a player who is described and we have seen him with characteristics of great explosiveness, we have heard and read about his height, but there are many examples of very good players who have dominated from a physical point of view in rebounding despite being 3 or 4 cm shorter, and we could name just as many players who at 212, 213 cm have failed to have a major physical impact. On Cacok I also want to say that he is a player who can change, and that is one of the characteristics Sergio Scariolo was looking for: a long man who could change even with the number 4. Let’s not forget that we also have Jordan Mickey on the roster, who when he was made to play as a number 5 has certainly performed well. Virtus has a scouting team, we want to have clarity on that as well. We have two scouts who work for Virtus full-time, two people who have been totally shared with Sergio Scariolo. Devontae Cacok is a product of this scouting work. We have received very good references from Marc Gasol, who was his teammate at the Lakers. We have in-depth reports here: when we make choices they are choices that come from the technical staff and then they have to be shared by us, as far as the combination of the technical side and the managerial side.”
“On the nationals player I would like to add that Dobric is currently in the quintet in Serbia, so we are very satisfied with what our nationals are doing at the moment. On Shengelia I would add one important thing. Euroleague has reiterated with a written document an important thing: when a player is under contract with a club, whoever is possibly interested in acquiring the rights to the sports performance of that player must contact the club. We wanted to reiterate something that is certain, a rule that applies to everyone and that in other major sports does not even need to be reiterated, you only have to read the Gazzetta dello Sport to see how upset a club gets if some prosecutor or some person meddles with a player without there being the right and proper relationship between the two clubs. We wanted to reiterate a position strongly, to protect what is our work and what is the image of Virtus and its value. As for Lundberg, he came here from CSKA and from a brief NBA experience. He is a valuable player, we saw in the first months his value, we saw it in the game we won in Barcelona in which he was probably the best player on the court. He suffered a fairly mild injury to his finger, which affected him a lot, and then he suffered what all players who have to deal with a great champion suffer, because playing in the role of Milos Teodosic is not an easy thing. We’ve seen it with some players on previous rosters as well, it takes a great personality and character. During the summer he received offers. The contract that Lundberg has with us is nothing more and nothing less than the contract he had with CSKA, two BCL teams made offers to him that he legitimately considered not to accept, but they were offers that from the economic point of view one equaled the contract he has with us and one improved it, because although it had a slightly lower economic value it had a triple duration. He had two Euroleague teams with whom he traded, he and his attorney, some thoughts, things didn’t go the way they wanted also because we don’t give away our players and we don’t do things that we think are contrary to corporate style if a player has to be on his way out from us. We have touched on the fact that our players have value in the market, in a market like basketball where there are no trades. We were able to make transactions that brought in revenue. Last year we could have sold Jaiteh, monetizing a lot, so as Luca said we could have sold Shengelia monetizing just as much but we didn’t want to do that because we wanted to reward the team that had won the Eurocup by giving these guys a chance to measure themselves with the Euroleague. Lundberg as of today is our player, things are clear and we talked to each other very clearly. Tomorrow we will meet him again, he has already arrived here. The basketball meecate is always open, he knows very well how things are, there is a lot of clarity and there is no friction. If conditions occur in the coming days or weeks for him to leave then he is an outgoing player, if those conditions do not occur it is already all very clear what we intend to do. Right now it is about us and the player, we will see how the next few weeks develop, then when there is something to say we will say it.”
“It’s very important because four and a half years ago Luca and I were sitting in the office looking at what we found about the youth sector. As he said, we made a radical choice, which was not to bring boys to Bologna at a fairly delicate age without any certainty that these boys would later become players. If we go and look at the names of these boys certainly the vast majority or almost all of them did not become important players at the time. We decided to favor the Bologna area, a great basketball territory and its surrounding areas. Here, too, we wanted to give a managerial feel. The youth sector also has to live with costs, accounts and characteristics proper to a business. After four years we can be satisfied, we have wonderful kids who work with great passion, Gabriele Pagliara and Mattia Largo. Having one of our guys who played a very important role in the national team that came home from the Under-16 with a European silver means that with a little patience, which is what is sometimes lacking here, you can get results. Another guy of ours, here we were talking about Accorsi, who was Baiocchi, did not go because he was injured, otherwise we would have had two players. Having two important players in the U16 gives us hope that in the next steps, in the U18 and so on, our boys can be present at the highest level and we want to bring them closer to the A Series. Accorsi himself said he will be very happy to do training with the first team, and for us to bring the two worlds closer together is very important.We anticipated by a few years what Jorge Garbajosa said in his last speech, of great attention on both the women’s and 3×3 sectors.We gave Rae d’Alie to the national team and she won a world championship, we gave Beatrice Barberis and Beatrice del Pero, now there is also Chiara Consolini. We have a great relationship with the national teams with a great presence, so this is definitely something that gives us great satisfaction and indicates that we are on the right way.”
“Paolo Ronci will be happy if he perceives a positive environment around the team. It is a team that will live on the enthusiasm of the public, and I will be happy if the team and the public find that empathy that is what makes seasons go from normal to winning, we will then see what winning means. For us now to compete in Italy to be where the titles are played, and in the Euroleague we definitely want to try to improve on last season’s position. There is a new play-in rule that broadens everyone’s hopes. So I will be very happy if all the virtussino people love this team, because I am absolutely sure that if this team receives the love and warmth of the virtussino people, it is a team that has the right blood to give a lot back and entertain people.”
