The first field goal made is never to be forgotten. Giordano Bortolani is a born shooter, he has always been (“It’s my passion – he confesses -, it is from day one). Your first career basket was like the first time you set foot in the Palalido to play with Olimpia’s Under 13 team. Giordano is a son of this art. His father Lorenzo spent years playing in the minor leagues. He had a reputation for being tough but not very talented. Giordano has more talent, more skills. One day Stefano Bizzozero called him: in those days he was coaching in the youth team. He offered him a tryout at Olimpia with the Under 13 team. He passed the audition and stayed. “I remember that day well – he says – it was January of 2012. I confess I hoped one day to wear the same jersey with the grown-ups. Obviously, you think it just to think about it, you don’t know if you’ll really make it and how long it will take to do it. It took much. But I thought about it, I hoped about it”, he says. He hoped for it, and he did it. Now it’s up to him. Six years later that first Olimpia day he scored his first points in the Italian league. It was January again. 2018. At the Mediolanum Forum there was a special opponent for him. Capo d’Orlando. It is the team from the where his mom Anna Maria comes from, a place to which he owes a lot. His father went to play in Capo d’Orlando, there he met Anna Maria and Giordano was born. It was a destiny. Giordano is half Milanese and half Sicilian. Capo d’Orlando was in Milan that day and he was rewarded with the opportunity to play against his second team (it had happened the year before too, but it wasn’t possible to let him play at the end). “I was nervous. When you play at the Forum for the first time it seems even bigger than it actually is”. And it was also full, 11,000 spectators. It was a beautiful Sunday, favorable tip-off time, many young people attending, a lot of enthusiasm, initiatives. The public responded well, beyond all expectations. Olimpia easily won that game so there was room for a rookie at the end. Giordano was nervous but didn’t show it. He stepped back and shot from the corner. “I saw the ball going in, I didn’t understand anything anymore.” It wasn’t the only he scored that season. He made one from a very long distance at the buzzer against Pistoia. For a very young player, these are satisfactions. He was 17 years old. And technically he also won the championship. He wasn’t in Trento when Olimpia clinched it, but he was sitting on the bench in Game 5 when Andrew Goudelock made the famous block that probably saved the night and the series. The first day at Olimpia. The first time he scored. Moments you won’t forget. That Giordano Bortolani won’t forget.

When he was in the youth academy of Olimpia, during the season before moving on to play essentially as a professional, Bortolani spent a year in Bernareggio in the third division, along other boys from the academy. “Seeing how I was doing against older players, that was the moment I thought I could actually play basketball,” he recalls. The first few seasons have been a constant growth, no matter what category was. In 2017/18, in Bernareggio, he averaged 10.1 points per game; the following year in Legnano, a class up, he averaged 12.5 points per game. Scoring more by moving up a category never happens. Bortolani did it. In 2019/20, in Biella, again in second division, he reached 14.9 points per game on average. He also got the first call for the National Team. And in 2020 he officially became a top league player, in Brescia. On November 8, 2000, he scored in double figures for the first time. Curiously he did it, at the Mediolanum Forum, against Olimpia. “But I wasn’t play much that year – he recalls – so yes, I received a great deal of confidence when I played that game, in Bologna”. He had just turned 20. Brescia surprisingly won in Bologna: against Virtus, against Marco Belinelli, they exploded “that game” was the one he had 23 points in 25 minutes. Shooter stuff. Shooters are like that. They catch fire. In that season, Bortolani had no consistency, however, neither of minutes nor of performance. But toward the end of the season, he scored 23 points again, against Cremona, and then 24 the following week against Pesaro. “I’ve traveled a lot, changed many teams in recent years, it helped me get to meet new people, new environments and enrich my baggage. But now I’m happy to be here, for me it’s about working to improve every day, listening to the coaches, listening to my teammates, because I have something to learn from all of them, and see what happens,” he admits.

The following year he moved from Brescia to Treviso. Another step forward, in terms of continuity and peak performances. 15 games as a starter, 18 times he scored in double figures, five times he had at least twenty points scored, the high was 27. He averaged 14.4 points per game over the last ten games of the season. And Bortolani was also named the best young player of the BCL. “I didn’t even know that award existed – he recalls – Then in the middle of the season I read an article in which I was mentioned as a candidate. I saw that it could be the winner and I tried to see if I could do it. It happened. It was nice, an accomplishment. I also know that in the long run it doesn’t mean anything, that I still need to work and improve a lot.”

Last season was the most complicated one. First, he challenged himself by moving abroad for the first time, to Manresa, then the Catalan team reshuffled all the cards and he returned to Italy, to Verona. He had 11 games in double figures (out of 23), another 23 points scored against Virtus Bologna, only three appearances in the starting lineup but he scored 51 points in those three games. “I liked Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson: not being able to wear Billy Baron’s number 12, I opted for number 3 which is the sum of the two digits and is also Iverson’s number. I watched a lot of Billy Baron last year,” he points out. Baron is shorter than him, but plays the same position, shooting guard, and has built a career on shooting. Bortolani watches him and tries to learn. “Actually, I can and must learn from everyone – he admits -, but certainly there are things about Billy Baron that I can treasure. I have noticed that he has a very quick release and that no matter when he misses, he doesn’t care, he keeps taking his shots with confidence. This is an important detail.” Something to remember every day, every possession, every shot.