“I was shocked, really, obviously I was focused on the season finale in Spain and when I saw the proposal coming I was really amazed. Clearly I knew Virtus, it was a lot of emotions all at once, shocked is the right word… the first reactions were these.<\/em><\/p>\nTell us a little bit about your first days here, about fitting into a strong group that has been playing together for many months. Was it easy for you?<\/strong> You know what? It was a lot of information in a short time, understanding everyone’s character and personality, from the sta\ufb00 to the players. They were all really open with me and made this process much easier, we quickly made a nice connection with all the guys on the team and the coaching sta\ufb00. They are all good guys, strong personalities in a very professional club; that made it a lot easier for me.<\/em><\/p>\nThis is not your first season in Italy, you had a good season in Reggio Emilia in 2020-2021 when the public still could not enter, during the pandemic.<\/strong>
\nThat season was really special, my son was born in Reggio! It’s funny because I still hadn’t been back to Italy since that year, not even on vacation, so it’s been a while… But when I came back here it all seemed so normal that I almost felt like I was home even though I hadn’t been coming for a long time. Reggio will always be special to me and so will Bergamo, the place where I started. Italy for me represents the beginning of what I would call my rise to professional level basketball. Bologna is a nice place to be, Italy in general is… I am a cheese lover and Parmigiano Reggiano is \u201cVERY GOOD\u201d for me, it is fantastic.<\/em><\/p>\nA very young Momo Diouf played with you that year in Reggio, now you found yourselves here. Did you know any of your other teammates?<\/strong>
\nMore than knowing them personally I knew them indirectly. Matt Morgan and I played for the same club at different times, but we have mutual friends, so we knew each other even without really knowing each other. With Isaiah I attended the Summer League his first year when he was picked by the Atlanta Hawks; he was very young and was skinny, nothing like the player he is now. Otherwise I was watching the Euroleague, so of course I knew Will, Dani and Toko…it was nice to get to know them and create a friendship in a short time. Young Momo (laughs)… that year in Reggio they were going hard on him, they loaded him up a lot and now look what a player he has become! He is special, even then I had a great relationship with him and it was exciting to meet again.<\/em><\/p>\nBack to the current Playoffs: you played a great gamein Game 3 against Olimpia, now you have to face Brescia for the title; what has Dusko Ivanovic asked of you since you arrived and what is it like to be coached by him?<\/strong>
\nHe first told me that he wanted me to be myself, to come out making a contribution to the team but without distorting myself. I knew I was coming in on the eve of the playoffs\ufb00 into a broken group with a strong identity, so it was clear to me that I should give whatever would help the team. Then of course he told me a few things that would come in handy, but always with the promise to be myself on the court. Coach Ivanovic knows exactly what he wants, he is a legendary coach, sometimes less experienced coaches or players miss some details and look a little bit at how things develop, but with him … let’s say for me it’s also important to be able to learn, to see his temperament, how he handles situations. He is a legend, to be part of that for me is very positive.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":72620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307,268,256,248],"tags":[308,269,265],"class_list":["post-72622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euroleague-en","category-primo-piano-en","category-a-league","category-news","tag-euroleague-en","tag-app-en","tag-evidence"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virtus.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}