Coach Ettore Messina has won his second championship at the helm of Olimpia, it is also the first back-to-back since 1987 for the club. Before him, Giannino Valli, Cesare Rubini and Dan Peterson have been able to win two consecutive championships with the team. “We owe this Scudetto to a ownership that, even in the darkest moments, supported us with positivity, without ever getting caught up in anxiety. Mr. Armani and Mr. Dell’Orco had a very important role in this triumph. Then it’s a championship won by a group of players who had a thousand reasons to be dissatisfied with their minutes, or lack of, or for other reasons, but in the end, they always found the strength to set personal situations aside and care about the team. Evidence is coming from tonight’s game, where everyone helped us and was useful at time, both defensively and offensively. Then it’s the championship won by a staff of competent and smart people; I mean the coaching staff but not only. We are enormously grateful to the fans for what they have given us, not only today but also during the trying times we experienced. Winning is always wonderful. Very few would have thought that a team would be able to win all its four games at home in a seven-game series, even I had a lot of doubts. Instead, this was a performance of great cohesion, the guys dived for every loose ball. And we got all the loose balls. We did a little bit of what we had already done in Game 5, we didn’t wait for them, we went after them.”
The meaning of the win: “It’s not that we’re doing this to win against someone. When I was younger, I had this desire of revenge factor, now we are in a world where so many things happen that I don’t have no desire and no motivation to expose anybody for something that was said or wrote. I don’t read, otherwise I’d feel bad, because I’m human. I am happy for my wife, my children, my family, the club. I’m so happy for them and for the fans. In such a year, we had the highest average attendance ever, almost 10,000 fans per game.”
The turnover choices: “I will never leave Kyle Hines out, due to his history and to what we believe in, for me it’s trivial, there are things worth more than two field goals or a rebound. I chose Hall, who didn’t have a great series honestly, but I had to face the physicality and depth of Virtus. I was really worried about it. When you make these choices, there are five players left out. This can split a team, if one of them went to someone within the organization to cry and found fertile ground everything would fall apart. Instead, they all continued to work, even overcoming the humiliation of game day when they are forced to work individually because you never know. That’s why I say it’s a championship won by the people who work with us.”
Gigi Datome’s series: “We kept him in mothballs all year. I uttered fifty thousand curses when he was out, now we must congratulate everyone who worked with him, physiotherapists, doctors, trainers. I would like to be a little Zen like Gigi is. I’ve never seen him discouraged, except at the pre-Olympic in Turin when he was physically down and had a swollen elbow. He has great inner serenity. He was our MVP, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
On his personal season: “I would never have come here if the last result had conditioned the judgments about my work. But I knew from day one that it would never be like this, with Mr. Armani and Mr. Dell’Orco. If I feel inadequate to make the job done, then I step aside. The contract doesn’t count, I left a two-year contract at Real Madrid, it’s not a discriminating factor. In this club, decisions don’t come from the gut, which is why I’m happy to be a part of it.”
