The Italian National team with three Olimpia players will make its debut on Thursday, August 31 (20.30 Italian time) at the European Championships against Israel. The challenge is immediately tough because Israel hosts the qualifying round and home-court adavantage in Tel Aviv is historically powerful. On the same court three hours earlier Mantas Kalnietis’ Lithuania will face Georgia. The next day, at 16.00 Italian time, Dairis Bertans’ Latvia will play against one of the great tournament favorites, Serbia. This is the group located in Istanbul.
Five players from Olimpia after Dada Pascolo had to step down at the last minute are committed to play Eurobasket 2017, a tournament heavily affected by injuries (see Sergio Llull of Spain, Giannis Antetokoumnpo of Greece, Tony Parker of France, Serbia’s Milos Teodosic or Danilo Gallinari of Italy) or other reasons (see Rudy Fernandez and Nikola Mirotic of Spain, Rudy Gobert and Nicolas Batum of France, Nikola Jokic of Serbia) and therefore not easy to predict. This is an edition in which Olimpia is very involved. It’s happening to other EuroLeague teams, like Fenerbahce, Olympiacos, CSKA, Barcelona and Valencia. Italy is included in the Tel Aviv group with the favorite Lithuania, Germany, Ukraine, Georgia and Israel. The last two have had the best preseason record. Lithuania and Germany have been struggling and so did Italy.
Marco Cusin had an interesting approach to the torunament: he ws surprisingly released, went on vacation waiting to restart his trining regimen with Olimpia, as he did for a few days. Then he was called back. Cusin took his customary role of rim protector, deadly pick setter and rebounder. Its impact will be mostly at the defensive end of the floor. He will play in his fourth Eurobasket.
It is the fourth Eurobasket for Andrea Cinciarini too: since 2011 he has never missed one tournament even though last year he did not play the pre-Olympic in Turin. He had a quiet preparation because he played very little. Eventually he was selected to protect the team as a point-guard. His last game was the one where he had more minutes and played a lot better.
- Awudu Abass was a member of the team since day one. He’s one of the Italian perimeter players with the best combination of size and athleticism. He won’t have a primary role because his position is taken by Gigi Datome, the Captain, and the more experienced Pietro Aradori. He’ll have to provide defense and three-point shooting. For him in order to produce he will have to do a lot in just spot minutes.
Mantas Kalnietis will play against Italy and that’s not good luck for Italy, historically (he had 14 points and 11 assists at Eurobasket 2015 in the quarterfinals). Normally with the Lithuanian National Team he plays huge minutes: at the last Eurobasket he finished with 34.2 minutes per game, second best; at the 2016 Olympics he played almost 32 minutes per game, fourth overall (by the way he led the tournament in assists). He was supposed to make room to Lekavicius, who just moved to Panathinaikos, the Lithuanian point guard of the future, but he’s injured and won’t be available. Kalnietis will play a lot again.
Finally Dairis Bertans. In spite of being 28 he will play his fourth Eurobasket too. He never averaged less than 10 points per game. Latvia has a lot of expectations because of its stars, Davis Bertans – Dairis’ younger brother who plays for the San Antonio Spurs – and Kristaps Porzingis, the big New York Knicks’ megastar. Last summer at the pre-Olympic tournament in Belgrade, Dairis averaged 16.3 points per game while playing almst 28 minutes. He will play a lot in Istanbul too.
