Nikola Mirotic, Alex Poythress, Maodo Lo, the new Italians coming up and many more topics were touched by Coach Ettore Messina in his customary, traditional media availability at the beginning of the season.
The off-season – “I spent some beautiful months, because honestly when you are vacationing after a big win everything is more enjoyable. Talking, meeting people I realized how winning the second championship in a row was appreciated, how much people enjoyed a team that won the third star. As far as Shabazz Napier is concerned, we expressed ourselves pretty clearly. At some point, he rather have a different type of contract and signed for Red Star. We owed a lot to Mr Armani and Mr Dell’Orco not just for the financial effort but for the love of the team that ultimately gave us the chance to bring Nikola Mirotic to Milan. It’s as simple as that. I hope that our seriousness, the credibility we built with the way we tried to do things over the last few years, on top of having some big players here, played a role here. For us it is a matter of pride and also means more responsibility. We feel a lot of responsibility, but with Mirotic here there is just more motivation to be better. We’ll try to succeed.”
The playing style – “At the end of the day every team is doing things very simply, a lot of pick and rolls, some screens to free up the shooters, somebody is trying to post-up. We’ll add a player like Mirotic, who is very dangerous posting-up, just like Poythress is dangerous there and is also very athletic and defensively versatile, and Kamagate who is a vertical player who will improve a lot of build himself a beautiful future. They will help us do better what we tried to do in the past. We’ll have more tools, more post-up situations, more pick and roll players to complement the off screen shooting of Billy and Shavon. Last season we were less efficient down low than we hoped to be. Being deep and versatile is an excellent thing.”
Poythress signing and Datome replacement – “Pangos and Baron gave me excellent recommendations on Alex as a person: this is crucial for us. When you look at our depth keep in mind that we have the World Cup and there won’t be the November Fiba window, and we’ll have the play-in challenge. So, we might have two more games potentially and in order to fix the schedule they had to compress it until January. As a fact we have five players we don’t know when and how they could rest a little. They will come a couple days before the Supercup and won’t have a break until February. We are very lucky to be so deep with our big men. On top of it, Mirotic will give us some minutes as the small forward spot to make-up for Datome’s departure. They are not similar players of course but both of them have size and the ability to shoot from the perimeter and score posting up. After losing a great player like Datome, we could’ve not a better solution to fill those shoes.”
The last season legacy – “I’ll bring with me the cohesion that we had, because we could have gone down so many times, but the team stayed mentally tough and stayed together, because of the veterans’ leadership, Melli, Datome, Hines. The daily effort, the way they did thing the right way is something I’m very grateful for. Obviously, we lost nine straight EuroLeague games, the hole we put ourselves in, the injuries, the struggle to get some line-up stabilities are something I want to avoid. We need to find, in a realistic period of time, some consistency and balance.”
Kevin Pangos – “He had a very good working summer; he came here in a much better situation than he was one year ago when he was coming off the Cleveland experience and he didn’t play much there. Somehow, he agreed with the Canadian national team to prevent him from going to the World Cup so he could come immediately. He looks very aware of our expectations, our wishes and of how he could be the Kevin Pangos we knew from St. Petersburg and Barcelona, the player for some reasons he couldn’t be last season. He looks good in practice, I think that Mirotic and Poythress, who he knew, are helping him a lot.”
The young Italian players – “We have a group of guys who can and have to give us a lot during the Italian league games. Flaccadori is the one more experienced and I think he is approaching his role the right way. Bortolani and Caruso, and Kamagate too, have great room for improvement. They are players that give you great enthusiasm coming to practice to see them improve. They are running, jumping and shooting.”
Shavon Shields – “I just wish he can be the player he was three years ago in terms of games played. Back then he had an enormous impact on us. Over the last two seasons, he missed a lot of games. Over the last playoffs, he showed which kind of impact he has on our team even when he is far from being 100 percent Shavon Shields. He re-signed him with a lot of confidence and optimisms anticipating what he can do for us.”
The big men – “Some of our bigs they need to get the ball while moving, at high speed. Poythress and Kamagate can catch it over the rim too, like Tarczewski did a few years ago. This can help the guards because when you are playing next to somebody who can dunk every time, he rolls that opens up a lot of opportunity for everybody.”
Nikola Mirotic– “Over the years we stayed in touch. He had a lot of nice gestures toward me and my family, things you are not forgetting. He is emphatic, who established a great connection with everybody here since day one, he is married, has two kids, a very religious man. One thing is Mirotic the player, the NBA star, the Barcelona guy, another is the man. He has a lot of killer instinct on the court, and he is very easy off the court, he is somebody you go out to eat a pizza with. He is everything but a spoiled superstar.”
Maodo Lo – “We wanted him last summer too, but he didn’t feel like leaving Berlin. This summer everything was different. He is very athletic, he led a EuroLeague team for some seasons, he is a scorer and on a broken plays he can create a lot of things one on one. He complements Pangos because they are very different athletically, but they can also play together. And he can play along Flaccadori too.”
The youngsters – “Look at my story. I had Coldebella, Binelli starting very young in Bologna. Marconato was the National team starting center at 22. Ginobii, Jaric, Nesterovic, Smodis and Andersen wre starters in Bologna, Kurbanov was a 20-year old starter at CSKA, Bargnani too. The truth is: I don’t play whoever is not good enough. The youngsters we have here I feel are capable to stay on the court with the right personality. This makes the difference. If you struggle after two mistakes because the coach is screaming, then you got a problem. These guys are aware of this and are practicing the right way, trying to gain credibility. And they know that no matter what on Sundays they will have to be ready to play. Obviously, sometimes the ball is heavier, and you play the guys you trust more.”
Christos Stavropoulos – “We are like husband and wife, sometimes we have argument but at the end of the day we both know we couldn’t have a better wife or a better husband.”
Milan Tomic – “He’s been a great player; he has worked under top coaches like Bartzokas and Ivkovic. I’m very fortunate that he came here to help, even with Peppe Poeta. We lost Shamir because he wanted to coach and spend more time with his family. We replaced him the best way. And I’m happy that Tom Bialaszewski will coach in Varese. He will be fine.”
Milan – “We won the last two championships so right now they like me. I know I won’t be liked after a couple of losses, but I hope people will appreciate the effort event more than the outcome. However, it is great to come here every morning knowing we are active and we can improve a lot, on and off the court.”
