He was five years old, when Filippo Messina, from Catania, moved his beautiful family, three children, in Venice, because of his job. At that time, Mr. Messina did not imagine that his decision – and others that he would later take – would have given Italian basketball one of the most successful and appreciated coaches of at least two generations.
In Venice, Ettore Messina discovered basketball, a coach who formed him – Renato Vianello -, the one who pushed him towards the coaching profession after a loss in the local derby – Tonino Zorzi – and met Massimo Mangano, who wanted him in Udine as an assistant coach. In fact, that was the moment he became a professional. But there was another advice that his father gave to Ettore and would prove decisive. “Learn to speak English, you will always need it in life”. Ettore responded, three lessons a week. In basketball, English is useful, it makes no one a great coach, but in this particular case it provided what is called a “lucky break”.
In 1983, Alberto Bucci – an emerging coach from Bologna who had done very well in Rimini and Fabriano – was signed to coach Virtus Bologna by the owner and lawyer Gianluigi Porelli. Today, the award that in EuroLeague is given to the best executive of the year is named after him. Bucci was a great tactician, a motivator and knew how to talk to players. But he didn’t know English. His Virtus team had two Americans, Elvis Rolle and Jan Van Breda-Kolff. The latter came from the NBA. Bucci needed a coach who could translate his conversations and instructions with VBK. He thought of Messina. That’s how the 23rd Olimpia coach became a household name.
In 1983, he found himself coaching in one of the biggest Italian youth system, in an ambitious basketball town, coaching a great team. Virtus won the championship in 1984 – for Messina it was the first, albeit as an assistant – and so an exceptional story began.
In Bologna, Messina worked also for Sandro Gamba, then for Bob Hill, an American who would also coach the San Antonio Spurs – a curious intertwining of destiny – and arrived at Virtus as a former New York Knicks coach. With Hill on the bench, Virtus won the Italian Cup, but the American coach – in the heart of summer – decided to leave Italy and return to America, to accept a job with the Indiana Pacers. Virtus – which had Dan Peterson as Porelli’s trusted advisor – chose to promote Ettore Messina, when he was 30 years old. And a star was born.
At 30, Messina became the coach of the great Sugar Ray Richardson, four years older than him, the great NBA star with a turbulent personal story. It was Richardson who led the team to win the Italy Cup and then the Cup Winners’ Cup, the first international Virtus trophy ever, against Real Madrid, in Florence. The Real Madrid coach was George Karl, an American who did great things in the NBA (with Seattle, Milwaukee, Denver especially) and whose son Coby would later play in Milan, albeit very briefly. The first four years of Messina in Bologna were not all “easy” like the first. The night of the Cup Winners Cup triumph was marred by the serious injury that occurred to Roberto Brunamonti; later, Micheal Ray Richardson was cut for behavioral reasons and twice Virtus lost the championship semi-final series. But in 1993, when he had already been appointed head coach of the Italian national team, he crowned the first part of his experience by winning the championship. The 3-0 over Treviso in the final series allowed Virtus to match the 1985 Olimpia team, completing a playoff run with no defeat.
Messina coached the Italian national team until 1997, and thanks to that job and the opportunities associated with it, he deepened his relations with the American world, like Sandro Gamba himself had done previously. One of the strongest relationships was with the legendary North Carolina coach, Dean Smith, of whom he was also a translator in a clinic in Italy, described as “memorable” by the ones who attended it. Smith had also coached Michael Jordan at UNC, as well as James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Kenny Smith, Brad Daugherty and many others, including “our” Dante Calabria. With the national team, Messina had as its highest moment when the team won the European silver medal in the European championship in Barcelona, at St.Jordi, on the hill overlooking the city. That city has a special meaning for him: a year later, in the same place, he won the first EuroLeague championship of his career, defeating AEK Athens in the final battle with no holds barred, under 60 points, with a terrific amount of intensity, defense and physicality. It was the Virtus team led by Antoine Rigaudeau and Predrag Danilovic, the Serbian star had just returned from the NBA, Rasho Nesterovic, Alessandro Abbio. He also won the championship against Fortitudo, the one famous for the crucial 4-point play completed by Danilovic.
In his second Virtus’ reincarnation, Messina twice won the EuroLeague: after the 1998 triumph, he did it again in 2001. Basically, they were two different teams. After reaching the final game in 1999, in Munich – Virtus won the semifinal against its crosstown rival Fortitudo, but was defeated by Zalgiris in the decisive game -, the team was largely rebuilt during the summer of 2000. Rigaudeau was moved from the point guard position to the off guard to make room for Marko Jaric, David Andersen and Matjaz Smodis brought young blood inside. But above all the rising star was Manu Ginobili, 22, chosen by San Antonio in 1999 at the end of the second round, coming from Reggio Calabria. Luck had its way: Virtus wanted Andrea Meneghin, but Meneghin chose Fortitudo, and so the team fell back on its second option, precisely Ginobili. The role was to back up Danilovic at the small forward position. But after the Sydney Olympics, Danilovic at 30 decided to abruptly retire. Ginobili became a starter, struggled in the beginning, then exploded, he was the MVP of everything, with his energy, his athleticism, imagination and winning baskets, many of them. Virtus completed the Grand Slam, won everything it could win.
The following season, his last one in Bologna, was a roller coaster: after winning the Italian Cup, there was even an unexpected firing, never really explained. The Virtus fan base responded by storming onto the field before the following home game against Trieste and delayed the start of it. An unprecedented event in sport: by popular acclaim, Messina was returned to the Virtus bench. In retrospect, it was a mistake to accept, but he wanted to bring that team to another EuroLeague triumph. He only went close: at the Final Four in Bologna, he won the semi-final against Treviso, which was coached by Mike D’Antoni, but lost the final against Panathinaikos. As D’Antoni tried for the first time the jump to the NBA, Messina took his place in Treviso. He also won the Italian championship immediately and in the beloved St. Jordi made the EuroLeague final against Barcelona, the home team, but lost it. He remained three years in Treviso: in his last season, he launched a young Italian who would be the first player chosen in the NBA draft in 2006. He was Andrea Bargnani.
But when Bargnani at Madison Square Garden was chosen by the Toronto Raptors, Ettore Messina had already been in Moscow for a year. CSKA was a superpower, but could not grasp the most coveted prize, the European title, won for the last time in 1971. In 2005, the coach was Dusan Ivkovic, CSKA won all the EuroLeague games and lost for the first time in the semifinal, played at home in Moscow. Messina was chosen to coach a big team that he immediately led to the title, in the enchanting city of Prague. He had two players who had played for him already in Bologna, David Andersen and Matjaz Smodis, he had the great Theo Papaloukas, JR Holden and Trajan Langdon, whom he had coached in Treviso and is now the general manager of the New Orleans Pelicans, in the NBA. The EuroLeague was won again in 2008 in Madrid against Maccabi. In 2007 and 2009, he twice lost the final against Panathinaikos, both times because of two-point margins. The first, in Athens ended 93-91 and many consider it the biggest game ever seen at the European level. The second in Berlin was a tougher battle, with a great comeback that stopped just a moment before materializing.
For the following two years, it was Real Madrid to sign one of the most famous European coaches of the last thirty years. He stayed two seasons before leaving the team to his assistant Lele Molin first, and then to Pablo Laso, while Messina decided to cross the ocean and then also all the United States to land at the Los Angeles Lakers. He was part of the staff assembled by Mike Brown, now an assistant at the Golden State Warriors, then head coach. Brown had been the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers when Messina was in Moscow. He was so attracted to that system that he spent an entire preseason in Italy, following the team, a weird fact. Brown wanted Messina to the Lakers.
After that season (“It is an educational experience, in the end, I will be a better coach, whether I will be here or in Europe”, he said to the Los Angeles Times), he returned to Moscow: he won everything in Russia, and increased the number of Final Four reached, 11 so far (nine times his team reached the final game), including the Milan edition, in 2014, when Maccabi Tel Aviv, the team of destiny, won in a dramatic close game. It was then that Messina moved again to the U.S. to coach in one of the most coveted teams in the world, not only for the quality of the players – although they had just won the NBA title, with Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili -, but for what it meant in terms of culture, methodology, development. And for a legendary coach, Gregg Popovich.
In five years in San Antonio (including two summers spent with the Italian National Team), Messina experienced the NBA playoff atmosphere every year, including the last one played without any of the founding fathers of that team, Tony Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, who had already retired (and even without DeJounte Murray, the potentially new star of the team, who was injured). In 2018, he coached the whole playoff series against the Golden State Warriors, due to the unavailability of head coach Popovich because of his wife’s death. So, Messina has seen the golden NBA world for five years, from within, with its organization, structures, teamwork, the rampant passion for more sophisticated statistics (the analytics). And now he can bring this wealth of experience to Olimpia.
