Osvaldo Bolmaro was an excellent basketball player. He wanted to become a professional player and he came close to fulfill his dream. He would have liked to pass on his passion and ambitions to his son, Leandro. This he succeeded. But not so fast. As a child, Olimpia’s 2.00 mt tall point guard Leandro, at 2, the youngest EuroLeague player among the top 100 in average personal rating last year, was athletic but poorly coordinated. He was growing too fast. The sport he was best at was one in which his athleticism could be unleashed without too many constraints. He was good at the long jump. He was even better at high jumping. He had begun to jump following in his sister’s footsteps. “I had the Argentine record among kids my age, 15 or 16 years old. I have competed in many important meets in South America. I was really good,” he recalls.

But his friends, in Las Varillas, the place where Olympian and former NBA player Fabricio Oberto was born, played basketball and went to the gym all the time. And then his father told him about the golden generation of Argentine basketball, the boys who won the gold medal in Athens 2004. In his house they followed the NBA with a passion, in particular the San Antonio Spurs, when Manu Ginobili made the whole country proud, as if he were Maradona or Messi. “We stayed up late because the games were at night to watch Ginobili and the San Antonio Spurs. We were big San Antonio Spurs fans. Manu Ginobili was my idol,” recalls Bolmaro. As a fact Leandro warmed to the idea of ​​playing basketball seriously.

For a while he shared his time between the basketball court and the track. “I was good in the high jump, but I liked playing basketball more, it was more fun,” he recalls. When the time came to choose, because you couldn’t do everything, he chose to play basketball. “But it wasn’t easy,” he admits. Argentina lost a potential high jumper of international caliber while gaining a high-level basketball player in a period in which it needs it. “For our national team – he admits – it is not an easy time. We went from a very strong team to a young team. And it’s tough for all the national teams in general. Only 12 teams go to the Olympics and qualifying is very tough. This is also why I have the utmost respect for what they did in 2004. I, like the whole country, have great admiration for those players”, Leo remarks.

There is one player in particular from the Argentine national team that Bolmaro knows well: Pepe Sanchez, a point guard from Bahia Blanca, the Argentine basketball capital. He was a star at Temple in the U.S., then tried to play in the NBA without much success, eventually building a great career in Europe, in Malaga, Barcelona, ​​Panathinaikos, as well as with the national team. “He was the one who called me to Bahia Blanca as a professional. We have a close relationship, even now. It was he who recommended me to European clubs,” recalls Bolmaro. And that’s how he found himself at a very young age in Barcelona. “I played a tournament in South America with the Under 17 national team. Then we qualified with the national team for the Under 19 World Cup even though I was one year younger. The Barcelona coaches saw me there. It was a big change, a big challenge.” Bolmaro avregaed 13.8 points per game at the 2017 South American Under-17 championships. At the Under 19 World Cup he was already a known quantity. “But initially, I was a big man, I played close to the basket. At 9-10 years old they considered me a center because I was tall, but as I grew up I started playing everywhere. Then as a kid you don’t have a real position, you go on the court and play. It doesn’t matter where. When I chose to really play basketball, I started playing point guard or shooting guard.” That was the position they sgned him for, in Barcelona.

At home they often asked him the question. He was good, he was a promising player and when you’re good at basketball in Argentina your future tends to gravitate around Europe. So they asked him: “Leo, would you like to go to Spain? Live there, play basketball?”. He always said yes, of course, but he thought it was a joke. He was a young kid. Then one day the joke stopped being a joke. Leandro had to choose. He had to go to Barcelona or stay at home. He chose to go. “But when it was time to leave I had some doubts. It wasn’t easy to move. Luckily I lived with two other guys from the team and this made everything a little easier. Then the language was the same and my days were very busy. I went to school, then to practice and there wasn’t time to think too much. But in the end it was the right choice.”

It was the choice that changed his life. He played with the youth team, then for the second team, then he started practicing with the Barcelona’s first team, then he became an important player. Especially in the 2020/21 season. “I wasn’t playing much, – he recalls – then things changed in the playoffs against Zenit. There I started playing a lot and to be an important player. We went to the Final Four, we played against Olimpia. Calathes’ injury also occurred there. I was there, I was young, but I played a lot, I almost didn’t believe it. I haven’t thought about it much. In those moments you want to help the team, help them win. I did well even if unfortunately it wasn’t enough to win the cup.”

Among his teammates at Barcelona he had a veteran named Nikola Mirotic. “I told him: it’s as if he were my father or my uncle. In Barcelona, ​​he was the one who introduced me to the others in the first team, he helped me a lot: I always do what he tells me to do, because I know it’s the right thing. He always supported me. The relationship started well, then it became increasingly stronger, now I find him again in Milan. It’s fantastic. Great player, great person, and playing with him is easy.”

But in the meantime, in his dizzying growth, Bolmaro was an NBA first round pick. His rights belonged to Minnesota. And he decided to live that adventure too. He stayed two years in the NBA, but it was not a fulfilling experience. “It’s hard to talk about the NBA for me, it was tough. I had some good times and definitely learned a lot and grew mentally. I think that also thanks to that experience I’m here now because, after the NBA, many good things happened, I had a good year at Bayern and now I’m in Milan, happy to be there and ready to go.”

Coming back, he played a portion of the season in Tenerife, then a year at Bayern. And now he is in Milan. “Olimpia is a great team, a great organization. I gathered a lot of information before coming here, I talked to players who have been here and I heard only good things. Then I chose Milan because the project, the ambitions of the club, the challenge that is proposed to me are the one I was looking for. For me personally and for the whole team, it is a great challenge, a great opportunity to build one of the best teams in Europe. It will be a great opportunity to demonstrate who we really are.”