There are records that mean more than others because the human factor is added to the basketball one. Playing 157 EuroLeague games with the same club is not a regular, every day, thing, because you need consistency, continuity, toughness, and it means having earned respect and consideration from the people who know you better than everybody else, who see you every single day. This is Nicolò Melli and this is the meaning of the milestone he reached. No player has played more EuroLeague games with the Olimpia jersey on.
Melli played his first EuroLeague game in 2010 when he was 19 years old and had just arrived in Milan from Reggio Emilia. Four minutes in Moscow, no points scored, on the road. His first big game was performed a few weeks later in Ljubljana, 13 points in 19 minutes. A sort of “coming out”. That season he played 10 games for Olimpia, then went on loan to Pesaro, returning the following season. From that moment on he never stopped. He spent five seasons at Olimpia at the beginning of his career plus three more now. Obviously, his numbers would have reached stellar levels if he had remained at Olimpia even beyond the fateful summer of his divorce in 2015. But that’s another story.
We could argue for a long time about the context in which this record has been set. Once upon a time fewer games were played, qualifying to the top European competition was not automatic. For example, in 1988/89 the European champions of Olimpia couldn’t defend the title because participation was reserved for national championship winners. And in 1988 Olimpia didn’t win in Italy. Other times, other regulations, different set of rules. On a statistical level, the great players from the past are penalized. But this does not take anything away from Melli.
Another consideration: in 111 of these 157 games that he played he also started, 74 out of 75 since he returned; 37 out of 51 in the last two seasons in Milan. So, we are in no way talking about occasional appearances, cameos, we are talking about games really played. Melli played over 3,300 minutes with the Olimpia jersey, over 6,700 overall; he is already among the top 25 for games played and minutes played; he is eleventh for games started, fifth among active players. This makes him special: in all the teams he was on, he was a pillar, a cornerstone of them. This is Melli.
