ALEC PETERS – “It feels amazing to join an organization like Olimpia Milano. It’s not just the name but the people inside the club who make it a team that my family is excited to be a part of. I will come ready to set a standard of hard work, consistency, and toughness. I hope the supporters know that we will give everything we have because I know they will give us everything they have. There are big things ahead for Olimpia and I want to say thank you to the club for wanting me to be a part of it”.

HIS CAREER – Alec Peters grew up in Washington, Illinois, where he attended the local high school. Recruited by Valparaiso, Indiana, he played there for four years. In 2015, he was the MVP of the conference tournament and in 2017, the Horizon League Player of the Year (averaging 23.0 points and 10.1 rebounds per game for the season). He was a three-time All-Horizon League first team. In 2017, he was selected 54th overall in the NBA draft by Phoenix, where he remained for one year, also playing in the G-League with the Northern Arizona Suns. The following season, he moved to CSKA Moscow, making his EuroLeague debut, winning the title and the VTB League. In 2019/20, he played for Anadolu Efes Istanbul; from 2020 to 2022, he played for Vitoria, Spain. From 2022 to 2026, he played for Olympiacos Piraeus, making four Final Four appearances, including the 2026 championship won in Athens. He also won the Greek title in 2023, 2025 and 2026, and the Greek Cup in 2024 and 2025.

NOTES – In 2023/24, he led the EuroLeague in three-point shooting (53.5 percent). At the 2026 Final Four, he scored 33 points over two games, shooting 88.9 percent from two and 100.0 percent from three.

L'articolo Alec Peters: “There are big things ahead for Olimpia” proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

Of his first six EuroLeague games as a coach, Poeta won five of them, defeating great teams such as—after Olympiacos—Maccabi on the road, Panathinaikos, and Real Madrid at home, the latter in the first outing at the ancient Palalido. “You think you can ride through the season, but it’s not realistic,” Poeta admits. “The level of the EuroLeague is very high, the coaches are exceptional. I’m curious: as a player, I absorbed everything my coaches said like a sponge; as an assistant coach, I absorbed everything I could from Gianmarco Pozzecco with the national team and, of course, from Ettore Messina here in Milan; now I try to steal as much as possible from the great coaches I go against, from Jasikevicius to Bartzokas to Scariolo. It couldn’t last, I knew it.”

It wasn’t a triumphant ride, but it was a triumphant season. In the year it celebrated its 90th anniversary, Olimpia achieved a historic feat: its first Italian Treble ever. “I was sure we would make history; we had done it in 2021 by returning to the Final Four. I didn’t know what or how we would do it, but I was sure it would happen again,” says Zach LeDay, the optimist of the group. Olimpia won three trophies in 1972 and 1987, adding international success to its Italian triumphs. The Treble needs to be put in perspective. Throughout the club’s glorious history, there have been even better seasons, but for some reason Olimpia had never achieved the Italian grand slam. Between 2016 and 2017, it won four consecutive titles, achieving the Treble across both seasons, but never in a single year.

Yet, everything was in danger of slipping away in September, during the season opener, the Super Cup semifinal against Virtus Bologna. With 59 seconds left, Olimpia was trailing by four points. With 32 seconds left, Carsen Edwards, Virtus’s long-distance shooter, hit a three-pointer to make it 83-80. Olimpia used the ensuing timeout to build a three-pointer and avoid an intentional foul. Shavon Shields attempted a three-pointer, guarded by Karim Jallow. The shot bounced off the rim. Daniel Hackett and Alessandro Pajola tried to rebounds a 50-50 ball that Leandro Bolmaro maybe barely touched. Pajola tried to keep control, but Devin Booker was the one who made the save. He then passed the ball to Quinn Ellis, allowing him to become a hero on day one of his Milano stint. “As soon as the ball left my hands, I knew it was going in; in fact, I bent over without waiting for it to go in,” Quinn recalls. Olimpia won the semifinal in overtime. The next day, Milano defeated Brescia in the championship game. Ellis was named MVP. The first step towards the Treble was perfected then. But as Poeta said, they had just hopped on a roller coaster.

Over the following two months, Olimpia won in Belgrade against Red Star; had the shot to win in Belgrade against Partizan; Lorenzo Brown’s potentially tying three-pointer against Monaco was taken after drawing a shooting foul that went unnoticed; in Barcelona, ​​Olimpia lost by two points, dying with the ball; in Kaunas, Olimpia won the best game of Pippo Ricci’s life; in Istanbul, Olimpia won against Efes; in between, it lost by three points at home to Valencia. In the Italian league, it achieved convincing wins in Varese and Reggio Emilia and dominated at home against Venezia. If we’re talking about a rollercoaster, the team was on it right from the start.

Then there was the night in Trieste. Trieste is a special city for Olimpia, for all that it means from a historical, emotional perspective. The hotel where the team normally stays is just a few meters from the street where Cesare Rubini was born, Via della Torretta. But Trieste is a historically tricky road game, because the home team was once again good this year and the trip very long. The game ended 86-82 for Trieste. From his first position on the bus to the driver’s right, Coach Ettore Messina probably decided it was time to hand the team over to Peppe Poeta. The following day, the statement prepared with the ownership and then the open letter to the fans explaining his decision closed a successful coaching stint in the club’s history, which included three Italian championships and a return to the EuroLeague Final Four in 2021, backed by the presence of Sergio Rodriguez, Kyle Hines, Gigi Datome, Nicolò Melli, and Nikola Mirotic in red and whites at some point.

On November 24th, the Peppe Poeta era thus began.

In Olimpia’s history, no coach taking over mid-season has ever won the league title, but rarely has a coach failed to finish the season in Milano. During the Armani era, that only happened in 2010-11, when Dan Peterson replaced Piero Bucchi. Gradually, Poeta took control of the storm and designed the team based on his ideas, launching an outlook in the Italian league based on four perimeter foreigners for a five-outside man rotation that was later adjusted a second time to expand it to six. He searched for his starting five and his second unit, while attempting to extend the number of consecutive minutes played, sacrificing Lorenzo Brown and Leonardo Totè. “Brown is an iconic player in Europe, a legend, but he’s had too many injuries and too many stops, and this forced us to make a painful decision. Toté is a player with great offensive skills, but Ousmane Diop was better to fit the team’s needs. Diop is more intense and better at doing the little things, while Toté is a player who needs minutes. Here too, we needed to make a decision that was consistent with what the team needed,” explains Poeta.

It’s noteworthy that Olimpia never touched its roster from that point on. Brown and Totè were not replaced, and while there were plenty of options at the center position, the decision at point guard was to focus on Quinn Ellis and Nico Mannion, the youngest duo in the EuroLeague at that spot. “Coming from Trento to a team like Milano, finding myself with this kind of responsibility surprised me. Adapting to the EuroLeague level was tough. I learned so much, every game, every day. In ten months, we played 80 games, and there’s never time to turn off the engine; you always have to be focused. Then there’s less space on the court and less time to do anything,” Ellis says.

In the first period, the period of illusions, Olimpia beat Panathinaikos in Milan with 26 points and eight three-pointers from Armoni Brooks; it beat Virtus with 23 points from Brooks and 14 plus nine rebounds from Josh Nebo. Furthermore, Olimpia won seven consecutive league games, not all of them easy, while Armoni Brooks’s rise from a good but untested player to an absolute star was becoming irreversible. “Coming from the NBA, from the G-League, Europe is a different thing in terms of toughness and physicality. The adjustment phase in the end was quite fast,” he said. It is clear that Brooks is the player who has benefited most from the new structure. Let alone the great games played in the EuroLeague, there was also the sensational three at the buzzer in the league that won the game against Udine. In hindsight, that hard-fought victory was signaling the start of a more complicated time after the honeymoon.

“We lost games, not just in the EuroLeague, allowing teams to comeback,” Poeta recalls. “I’m talking about painful comebacks, especially those against Red Star and Zalgiris, two key games for the EuroLeague, but I don’t believe in coincidence. We were beaten because we were missing something. One time it could have been simply Bolmaro’s absence, another time a lack of killer instinct, and another time experience in certain positions on the florr, but something was missing.” Against Udine, Olimpia won because Poeta had two timeouts to use in the final seconds. He couldn’t have won if, after Mirza Alibegovic’s three ro respond to Zach LeDay’s, Olimpia didn’t have the chance to stop the clock and get another chance. And Brooks scored. “My coaching style is a product of my playing career, in the sense that I can understand what players are feeling, the dynamics, the mental part, the mistakes. So I look at things from two perspectives. For example, in Game 4 of the Venezia game in the finals, with six minutes left in the third quarter, by the book I should have replaced Brooks after his third foul, a technical. But as a player, I understood that after hitting three threes in a row, it wasn’t the right time to replace him, that he would be manage himself. For me, it’s crucial to stay true to myself, that is, to be as a coach what I am as a person; therefore, tolerant and understanding of mistakes, which doesn’t mean I’m not extremely demanding, because I am. I try to stay under control under pressure. Perhaps that’s also a consequence of my playing days: as a point guard, you make a decision every 30 seconds, you talk to a teammate, to the coach. So, in that sense, I’m in a good place. Maybe that’s why I follow Saras Jasikevicius’s career so closely: he’s done the same thing I did, obviously at a much higher level, first as a player and now as a coach. I consider him a great coach and I study him. As I study others too.”

After the win against Udine, Olimpia literally shattered the odds and won in Athens against Panathinaikos, with no Ellis and with Shields prudently kept on the bench to avoid firther risks. Facing one of the best teams in Europe with no anxiety, making safe decisions, was perhaps the highlight of Olimpia’s season and of Coach Poeta. In OAKA, Brooks scored another 24 points and Lorenzo Brown added 17 in a game that he played with great pride. But then came February, and with it came the difficulties. “The bad thing about coaching is this: you know the players are winning games for you, but you put all the blame on yourself when you lose. You always think you should have done something different, called a different play, changed the rotation,” Poeta says. The dream of reaching the Final Eight in Torino with a perfect personal record in Italy was shattered by Varese. Then Brescia essentially erased the possibility of winning the regular season as well. But that was the moment of truth.

“I decided to play with four foreign perimeter players in the league because they all brought to the table something different. Bolmaro is our best defender, Shields is the player who keeps everything together, Brooks was the best scorer, and Guduric is a player with personality and skills. Looking at the team, I thought we couldn’t do without any of these four,” Poeta recalls. But in the Italian Cup quarterfinals, against Trieste, Ousmane Diop, the designated back-up center, was injured. In the EuroLeague, Devin Booker would be there, but not in Italy. “Yes, but I never thought it would be healthy to change the lineup. I trusted Zach LeDay to play center if required,” he explains. And then, with one less big man, the best that Pippo Ricci ever was had more time for himself: “I’m fine, physically and mentally. When you’re healthy, everything becomes easier – Ricci says -. I dont’ look much at statistics, but I took a glance and I think I was second in three-point shooting in the league: it’s a matter of choosing opportunities well, waiting for the right pass from my teammates, and letting the game come to you. I’m a glue, someone who helps his teams win. I think five championships in six years, four in Milano, validate that,” Ricci says. “The Italian Cup was the moment when we came together and at that point we proved to ourselves that we could beat anyone here,” Shields recalls. “We were coming off a good practice period. In general, when we had the time to work, we came out well. It was the same before the playoffs,” Poeta remarks.

In Torino, Olimpia won its ninth Italian Cup, beating Trieste, then Brescia and Tortona, all teams it had lost to during the regular season. The win in Torino was one of awareness. Brooks was devastating in the final two games: “My shooting was partly a gift from God, but I’ve worked on it since. I always try to be the first one there in the morning, doing extra sessions beyond practice because if you do the right things, then you get the right results.” The rest of the team, led by Marko Guduric, supported him. “For me, however, Torino represented a critical moment of the season because I was coming off an injury, I was feeling good, and I was playing well,” Ousmane Diop recalls. “That night when I got injured again, I had a mental breakdown. I’m not ashamed to say I cried. If you look at my history, when I’ve been healthy, I’ve always played well and given a lot to my team. It was the same in Milano, even in the playoffs. I’m a hard worker, I work hard, I bring energy to the team. I say this with the utmost humility, but injuries, and only injuries, can stop me. Unfortunately, it’s happened often in my career.”

Another threat that has emerged over the course of the season was the transfer market. In an era dominated by social media, every rumor, whether true or alleged, quickly becomes public knowledge, the subject of analysis, speculation, and commentary. It’s not a threat that can be hidden. Olimpia’s players were involved in the transfer market well before the end of the season. It happens to every team. But that doesn’t mean it is easy, it doesn’t mean this trend doesn’t pose problems that need to be addressed. In the end, those who have something inside them prevail, those who have the will to win, those who have the strength coming from the group, like Armoni Brooks, Zach LeDay, Quinn Ellis, Nico Mannion, Josh Nebo and, of course, Shavon Shields, the man who won ten trophies in six years with Olimpia. “The strength of this team was the group,” Brooks explains, “on and off the court. We’ve always been together. When you can come together and genuinely feel for your teammates, taking care of them everything becomes easier.”

The defense, long considered the team’s weak point, stepped up in the playoffs after the team locked itself in the gym. “We reduced the number of rules to rely more on instinct and less on thinking, then we simplified them,” Poeta emphasizes. “Defense is something that’s inside me, it’s been there since the day I started playing, and it’s helped me as a professional earn minutes on the court. Then I’ve also done important things offensively. I think the mental aspect, being in the same place for two years, has given me continuity and confidence,” notes Leandro Bolmaro, who was named Defensive Player of the Year in all Italian competitions. There’s another aspect that Bolmaro is building to make it one of the pillars of Olimpia culture: “The work ethic, which gives me the confidence to go out there and perform.”

Before the playoffs, Bolmaro was named Defensive Player of the Year, and Dino Meneghin personally delivered the news to Brooks of his season MVP selection: “All individual awards are team awards reserved for one individual. I’ve always felt the support of my teammates and the trust of the staff. They’ve put me in a position to do what I do best, which is shoot” Brooks says. Brooks himself, however, struggled for a while between the end of the EuroLeague season and the playoffs. “When you’re in a slump, you come out of it with the confidence that you built in practice and the trust of your teammates who see you shoot every day and believe in you. 0-for-7 or 0-for-8 games eventually become 7-for-10 games,” he notes.

In the playoffs, not only did the defense improve, but also the ability to perform in crucial games. Olimpia won Game 1 in Brescia, closed the series when it needed to, and finished with six wins out of six games at home. “We started out a bit as the underdogs, to be honest,” Poeta recalls, “because we’d never had the consistency to perform at a high level, and we also knew it wouldn’t be easy to win in Brescia and maybe even in Bologna in a potential final. But in the playoffs, we came together, and when I use the plural, I’m referring to the lesser-used players, like Flaccadori and Tonut. Being proactive and involved—I say this as a former player, I know l—is not common.” “I still haven’t fully grasped the magnitude of what I’ve done. I was talking to my wife about it, and we explained it to the kids, but they didn’t understand it either. Now I’m living in the moment, but I’m sure that at some point, looking back, I’ll say, ‘Wow, this is incredible.'”

🇬🇧 Shavon Shields has achieved his personal stardom, winning ten titles with Olimpia over six seasons

He is a Club Legend Already

Read More 👉https://t.co/6as1IunOpR pic.twitter.com/Gkg9kwYYKh

— Olimpia Milano (@OlimpiaMI1936) June 19, 2026

The championship was Olimpia’s 32nd over 90 years of existence. Olimpia’s average is around one Italian championship every three years of participation, but this is its fourth in five seasons and the seventh in the 18 years of Armani Group’s owenership. In modern basketball, you can’t talk about dynasties in the traditional sense; players change teams too frequently. But this consistency at the top represents the consistency of excellence, the culture of a club that becomes part of your skin, as Shavon Shields demonstrated in Venezia after the triumph by showing off the jersey of equipment manager Alessandro Barenghi, a guy who in 14 years at Olimpia missed maybe three road games but wasn’t there for the treble-winning game due to a sports injury. This is the group, this is the Olimpia culture. “Lifting three trophies in the same year, doing it as captain, was like a dream come true. I’m still not satisfied, I’d like to do better in the EuroLeague, but after ten months of work and sacrifice, when you see a group where everyone gives a little piece of themselves for the collective good, then all the work has paid off,” says Ricci.

L'articolo Olimpia 2025-26: history of a Treble proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

Big ovations for Shavon Shields, the record-breaking man, a guy of few words but many facts. For the three-time MVP, Armoni Brooks. For Josh Nebo and Zach LeDay, who still hasn’t removed the Venezia arena net from his neck. “I said, when I came back, that we would make history like the first time. We did it,” he said, alluding to the 2026 Treble after returning to the 2021 Final Four.

The rest was done by the setting, the sea of ​​red jerseys filling the square, under the hidden direction of Captain Pippo Ricci, the gratefulness from Peppe Poeta, the heartfelt chants for Leandro Bolmaro, who will now join the national team, like other players from the Treble, like Stefano Tonut (“It was a difficult year, thank you for supporting me”), for example. With one commitment: we’ll meet again in September, and the atmosphere of Games 1 and 2 of the final series will become the norm at Unipol Forum.

L'articolo What a beautiful day it was, Milano! proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

L'articolo Eighteen triumphs since Mr Armani takeover proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

Sandro Gamba won ten titles as a player, all of them are Italian league championships. During his playing career, national cups did not exist, and international club activity began only at the end of his playing days. This certainly penalizes him. The same goes for Enrico Pagani (nine championships), Gianfranco Pieri, and Sandro Riminucci. The latter two won nine championships plus one Champions Cup. In their time, there was no second international competition yet, and there were no other competitions in Italy.

In an era more similar to the current one, we find the other three players who have won more than ten trophies, 11 to be precise: Mike D’Antoni, Dino Meneghin, and Roberto Premier. They all won five national titles, two Italian Cups, and four international trophies. Franco Boselli and Vittorio Gallinari, whose red and white epic career ended after the 1987 Grand Slam, won eight titles.

Shavon Shields won four league titles, to which he added three Italian Cups and three Super Cups. Close to him on this special list there is Pippo Ricci, who, unlike Shields, did not win the 2020 Super Cup or the 2021 Italian Cup (a season in which he also won the league title with Bologna, his fifth) but has won eight trophies with Milan.

L'articolo Shavon Shields’ personal star proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

In the era before the Super Cup, Olimpia achieved the Championship-Cup double three times: in 1972, 1986, and 1987. In those seasons, the Super Cup did not yet exist. However, the 1972 team (coached by Cesare Rubini; on the court there were Iellini, Brumatti, Bariviera, Masini, and Kenney, among others) won three competitions thanks to their win in the Cup Winners’ Cup. The 1987 team (coached by Dan Peterson; on the court tere were D’Antoni, Premier, Barlow, McAdoo, and Meneghin, among others) also won three competitions, capturing the European Cup (and the so-called Grand Slam). To complete the picture, the 1966 team (coached by Cesare Rubini; on the court there were Pieri, Riminucci, Vianello, Masini, Thoren, and in the European competition only Bradley) won the league title and the European Cup.

In the history of Italian basketball, the treble was achieved for the first time by Treviso in the 2002/03 season; four times by Siena (from 2009 to 2012 included), and once by Sassari in 2015.

L'articolo A Treble for the Ages, Olimpia! proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

L'articolo Number 32 is coming home and completes an historical Triple Crown proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

Game 4 is scheduled to be played in Venezia on Thursday, June 18th, at 20:00

COACH PEPPE POETA – “To play in such a difficult arena, against a competitive team, you need to play a disciplined game both offensively and defensively, built on extreme attention to detail. In particular, it will be crucial to do a better job against their offensive rebounders and in executing our transition defense.”

OFFENSIVE REBOUNDS – Coach Poeta emphasized the need to better control rebounds. Reyer grabbed 16 of them in Game 3, more than in the two games in Milans, where Venezia had already conquered double-figure offensive boards. The difference was made by Amedeo Tessitori, who took seven offensive rebounds and often converted them into points. The inside battle that Milano had won in Game 2 switched in Game 3. Tessitori and Horton finished with 30 points on 60 percent shooting from the field; Nebo and Diop each had 14 points on 60 percent shooting too. Better rebound control should translate into a less Reyer’s easy baskets. It’s also true that Olimpia’s centers had a difficult night with fouls, and Nebo’s third-and-fourth at the start of the second half completely changed the rotation from that point on.

TURNOVERS AND ASSISTS – Olimpia had accumulated 55 assists in the two games in Milano but dropped to 13 in Venezia, despite scoring 97 points. This means that a lot of scoring was done on individual plays. The turnover-assist ratio was 1:1 this time, much lower than in Games 1 and 2. This indicates that despite the 97 points scored, the offense also played a role in the Game 3 setback. Olimpia, on the other hand, attempted 35 three-pointers. Although they made 14 three-pointers, the use of outside shooting didn’t generate free throws and allowed Reyer to deal with fouls comfortably. Ultimately, Reyer scored 24 points from the line compared to Olimpia’s 13.

DEFENSE – The defense overall wasn’t comparable to the one seen in Milano. Reyer made 11 three-pointers at 51.4 percent rate. Reyer’s offense was efficient, with many points scored in transition, hence Coach Poeta’s request to improve the defensive transition approaching Game 4.

GAME NOTES – Marko Guduric’s eight assists in Game 3 tied the club record for assists in a finals game, previously held by Sergio Rodríguez (twice, in Game 3 and Game 6 of 2022 against Bologna), Shabazz Napier, in Game 4 of 2023, also against Virtus, and by Shavon Shields, in Game 2 of this series. The playoff record remains at nine assists, shared by Mike D’Antoni, David Hawkins, Ibrahim Jaaber, Marques Green, and Shabazz Napier. Shavon Shields played his 35th game of the championship series in Game 3, moving up to third place alone behind Tomas Ress (45) and Riccardo Pittis (39). Shields also reached 81 assists in the finals, third all-time. Andrea Cinciarini is ahead of him with 85. Finally, he became the third player to make more than 100 free throws in the finals. He now has 103. The all-time record holder is Carlton Myers with 194, ahead of Roberto Premier with 113.

L'articolo It’s Game 4 time: “Discipline and attention to detail will be the keys” proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

In Game 3, Venezia made 11 threes on 52.4 percent shooting from downtown; they got 16 offensive rebounds; had eight steals; Amedeo Tessitori and Chris Horton combined to score 30 points. On top of it, Tessitori grabbed seven offensive rebounds. The team dished 22 assists. Olimpia had good offensive numbers too, as witnessed by its 14 threes on 40 percent shooting and conquered 17 offensive rebounds too. But fouling was the only weapon used defensively, so Reyer went to the line 27 times. And ball movement was adequate, produced a series-low 13 assists and a series-high 13 turnovers. The turnovers were espcially painful in the third quarter because allowed Reyer to score easy transition baskets.

“We scored 97 points. Normally, they should be enough to win any game, but the defense that won the first two games so far and generally allowed us to build the playoffs run we are building wasn’t there tonight – Coach Peppe Poeta said at the end – They played a great game, as I anticipated, but we are guilty of accepting the tempo they wanted to establish. The third quarter cost us the game because we grew not patient enough and that generated turnovers. But at the same time I feel we started to lose the game earlier when we accepted to play their game. We weren’t physical, we didn’t put our body on them. They grabbed 16 offensive rebounds. We didn’t build the game we wanted to play. Now, it is time to reset and move on, trying to be ourselves in Game 4.”

Armoni Brooks led Olimpia’s scorers with 22 points in 25 minutes and five threes but he came alive late in the game. He led the team in its desperate attempt to comeback. Leandro Bolmaro added 20 points in 21 minutes, made three threes and again was consistent througout the game. In the third he single-handedly trie to keep Olimpia close to Reyer but ultimately he failed. Shavon Shields set the tone early with 16 first half points. For most part of the night he was almost alone. However, Olimpia led by one at the end of the first and was tied at 50 at halftime. Marko Guduric had a team-high eight assists again, acting as facilitator but too many players stayed below their Game 1 and 2 standards.

L'articolo Reyer responded in Game 3, now “we need to reset for the next” proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.

Game 3 of the championship series will be played in Venezia on June, 16th at 20:00.

COACH PEPPE POETA – “Against a team that at home has never lost once during the playoff, with a lot of talent and players capable to get off in a moment, we’ll need to play our best game so far. Even more than usual, our defensive pressure and ball sharing will be crucial in determining the outcome.”

DEFENSE – Reyer’s adjustments boosted Kyle Wiltjer’s performance in Game 2. The Canadian shooter scored 19 points with just one three-pointer made but six free throws, while playing at the center spot in the fourth quarter when Coach Spahija tried to open up the floor and lure Olimpia’s big men out of the lane (and Olimpia responded at times with Zach LeDay at center). Another aspect of Game 2 was the impact of Reyer’s outside players off the bench. The Candi, Valentine, and Wheatle trio shot 6-of-8 from three.

THE BATTLE IN THE MIDDLE – It was one of the keys to the series and proved to be so in Game 1. But in Game 2, the game took a different turn, and Reyer tended to focus on going small rather than using their centers. In Game 2, they scored just seven points combines on 3-of-8 shooting from the field. Amedeo Tessitori, who had scored 70 points in the previous three games, was held to six in Game 2. Overall, Olimpia’s two centers are averaging 22.0 points and 12.0 rebounds in the finals on 77.3 percent from the field.

OUSMANE DIOP NUMBERS

THREE-POINT SHOOTING – It’s always the key to every game. Olimpia managed to win during this playoff run even with poor shooting. But in the two games at the Unipol Forum, they didn’t need to. The 13-of-15 three-point shooting in Game 2 was the second-best performance from beyond the arc of the season, after shooting 61.1 percent in Game 1. The two specialists througout the season came up big. In the first two games, Zach LeDay shot 6-for-7 from three; Armoni Brooks 7-for-10

BALL SHARING – Coach Poeta remarked that defensive pressure and ball sharing as the basic principles on which to build games. Although turnovers increased from 6 in Game 1 to 12 in Game 2, Olimpia accumulated 55 total assists with a ratio of over 3:1. Quinn Ellis and Marko Guduric are dishing out 5.5 assists per game; Shields is averaging 5.0. In Game 2, his shooting was not brilliant, but he tied the Olimpia record for assists in a finals’ game with eight, a record already held by Sergio Rodríguez (twice, in Game 3 and Game 6 of 2022 against Bologna) and Shabazz Napier, in Game 4 of 2023, also against Virtus.

GAME NOTES – Shavon Shields’ eight assists in Game 2 tied the club record for assists in a Finals game. The playoff record remains of nine assists, shared by Mike D’Antoni, David Hawkins, Ibrahim Jaaber, Marques Green, and Shabazz Napier. The 62 points scored in the first half of Game 2 are the third-best scoring performance in a Finals game, behind the 65 scored by Pesaro against Varese in 1992 and by Olimpia itself in 1988 against Pesaro. In Game 2, Olimpia scored 31 points in the first and second quarters. Olimpia was already the only team in the history of the championship series to have scored at least 30 points in two quarters of the same game (Game 3 of the 2022 Finals against Virtus Bologna, 31 points in the first and 30 in the third period).

FINALS NOTES – Shavon Shields will play, in Game 3, his 35th game of the championship series, moving up to solitary third place behind Tomas Ress (45) and Riccardo Pittis (39). He will leave Denis Marconato and Marco Belinelli behind. Shields also reached 81 assists dished in the championship series, good for being third all-time. Andrea Cinciarini is ahead of him with 85. Finally, he became the third player ever to make more than 100 free throws in the finals. He now has 102. The all-time record holder is Carlton Myers with 194, ahead of Roberto Premier with 113.

L'articolo The Final moves to Venezia: “We’ll need our best game” proviene da Pallacanestro Olimpia Milano.