Ettore Messina was inducted today into the FIBA ​​Hall of Fame along 11 other great personalities deemed relevant to the history of basketball in the World, including Chuck Daly, the American Dream Team Head Coach at the 1992 Olympics.

“Messina – has been written on the FIBA’s official announcement – led Italy’s national team to a runners-up finish at FIBA EuroBasket 1997 and in his more than three decades of coaching, he has cemented his reputation as one of the greatest European coaches of all time; among the many title triumphs his teams have celebrated were four EuroLeague championships.” Coach Messina, who came to Olimpia Milano in 2019, has won a total of four league titles in Italy, six in Russia, three times he has won the VTB League, eight times the Italian Cup, two times the Italian Super Cup, four times the EuroLeague and once the Cup Winners’ Cup. Before coming to Milan, he coached Virtus Bologna, Benetton Treviso, CSKA Moscow, Real Madrid, the Italian National team and was an assistant coach with  the San Antonio Spurs for five years.

The FIBA Hall of Fame is a shrine dedicated to the amazing people who built the foundations of the global sport of basketball since its birth until its accomplished glory of today. It strives to be a genuinely international institution, active in the promotion and remembrance of basketball all over the world and houses the great men and women who were proactive and outstanding in the improvement and development of our sport. Created in 2007, it assembles over 110 outstanding players and coaches from 37 countries and all five continents to date. Its home is the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball in Mies, Switzerland.

Coach Messina was inducted along three-time FIBA AfroBasket winner Mathieu Faye (Senegal); Olympic gold medalist and world champion Sergey Tarakanov (Russia); three-time NBA All-Star Detlef Schrempf (Germany); leading scorer of the 1956 Olympics for bronze medal winners Uruguay Oscar Moglia (Uruguay – posthumously); five-time Czechoslovakian League champion and FIBA EuroBasket runner-up Stanislav Kropilak (Slovakia); Olympic silver and bronze medalist Penka Stoyanova (Bulgaria – posthumously); Olympic silver and bronze medalist Haixia Zheng (China), FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup runner-up and FIBA Women’s EuroBasket champion Hana Horakova (Czech Republic) and Olympic silver and bronze-medal winning coach Tom Maher (Australia), who has coached in six consecutive Olympics since 1996.

The digital ceremony will take place on June 18.

Cesare Rubini, Dino Meneghin and Bogdan Tanjevic are among the other Hall of Famers with ties to Olimpia.

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