Amedeo Della Valle’s summer? First the National team, then a lot of work in Milan where these days he is the only one to show up in the weight room or in the gym shooting, before the last vacation stop. “I try to take advantage of the extra time and prepare well for the EuroLeague, I talked to a lot of players who have experience in the competition: the Eurocup in its last rounds is played at a similar physical level but I’m also curious to find out how different it is. Where I will not get with the body I will try to get in another way “, says the 25-year-old bomber from Alba whose basketball path was very special.
Son of great basketball player,with a family that follows him everywhere, he emerged in the youth system of Casale Monferrato but at 18 he took a different route, flying to America. “I was at a crossroads: should I become a professional player in the Italian A2, at a very young age, or should I try to expand my horizons? I chose to go to America, immerse myself in a different culture even if at the beginning I did not even speak English. It’s a choice I’d do it again, every day of my life: apart from basketball, it made me grow so much on a human level,” he says. Not only that: he lived unforgettable experiences, like when his Ohio State Buckeyes faced Michigan or Michigan State or Purdue in front of 20,000 spectators. Almost as happened in Tallin when his Italian Under 20 National Team won an unexpected European gold in 2013. “We were not ranked very high but everything happened during the tournament: a couple of games won at the buzzer and finally we made it to the final against Latvia, practically a road game. My parents, my uncle and the relatives of the other boys were the only ones rooting for us … We won in a hostile building. It was great.”
In Reggio Emilia, Amedeo Della Valle established himself: he won a Supercup, competed internationally, took part in two Italian league finals, he became a top player. But now it’s up to Milan. “I would like to the Scudetto right away because I almost won it twice and never got there, once against Milan as we know. Olimpia is a winning organization and I am here to bring my little brick as Coach Pianigiani has asked me in order to build a consistently winning program. In my career, winning has never happened by chance: high school, college, wherever it has always been the result of hard work and chemistry, it will be like that with Olimpia, too. For years I have tried not to be just a shooter. During the last Eurocup I was the top scorer because I completed my game and this gave me great confidence, then it is true that I have always struggled defensively: I know Pianigiani and he knows me, so we will work together to reduce the problem as much as possible.”
A player named Della Valle wearing the Olimpia’s red jersey is a rather strange sight for those who remember the Milan-Turin battles of the ’80s with the presence of Carlo Della Valle, leading the opponets. “I did not have the chance to see him play, except in the minors, because among other things he retired early, but I know the story, I know about the sporting rivalry between my father and Mike D’Antoni. They are still friends. He gave me his passion for basketball but I have to say that he never forced me to play the game. In the beginning I also tried with soccer, then at the right time I chose basketball, but I consider the decisive moment of my story the day I decided to go to America,” he says, thinking about Las Vegas and then Columbus, in the heart of the American Midwest. Worlds far away for a boy who calls himself “simple, I like being with friends, and I like to fish even if I do not know how it is possible to do it here in Milan. Maybe along the Navigli.”
