Let’s start once again. This week the Olimpia season officially begins, although this year the preseason will be particularly hard to manage due to the high number of players unavailable because of their involvement with the national teams. On Wednesday, there will be the first practice of the season under Coach Ettore Messina, who is starting his fourth season in Milan. With him the two new additions of the coaching staff: Dan Shamir, who will help the lead assistant Mario Fioretti (this is his twentieth season in Olimpia!) as well as the returning Stefano Bizzozero, and Peppe Poeta, who’s making his debut after a long career as a point guard. The performance team coordinated by Francesco Cuzzolin and with Giustino Danesi, in his tenth season with Olimpia, in the role of strenght and conditioning coach, will be crucial during these first few weeks.
Only eight players from the actual roster will be involved during the first part of the preparation: Naz Mitrou-Long, Billy Baron, Devon Hall, Shavon Shields, Davide Alviti, Deshaun Thomas, Brandon Davies, Kyle Hines. Kevin Pangos will be with the Canadian national team that will face Argentina and Panama in the world qualifiers until the end of the month. On the other hand, six Italians are currently involved in the preparation for the World Cup qualifier and the European championship: Tommaso Baldasso, Stefano Tonut, Gigi Datome, Pippo Ricci, Nicolò Melli and Paul Biligha. In fact, it will not be possible to see the real Olimpia team until after the European Championships, during the last week of practices before the official start.
The team will play two scrimmages behind closed doors in its Mediolanum Forum gym against Cantù on August 31 and against Verona on September 3. The first official game will be on Saturday, September 10, in Cagliari against Varese, the semi-final of a four-team tournament that will also involve Dinamo Sassari and Panathinaikos Athens. The team with the national teams will play the Athens tournament during the weekend of 23 and 24 September (the semi-final will be against Maccabi; Efes and Panathinaikos also participate).
The official season will begin on September 28, in Brescia with the Supercup semifinal against Virtus Bologna. The eventual championship game is scheduled for the next day (Sassari and Tortona the other two participants). The first game of the Italian league will be on Sunday, October 2, at the Mediolanum Forum against Brescia while on October 6, Olimpia will be the first team to take the court in the EuroLeague at the Astroballe in Villeurbanne.
Four players will join the team during this phase: Jakub Wojciechowski is a welcome return after the 2020/21 season in which he contributed to the Italian Cup triumph. The others are Adam Kemp (2.08, center, 31 years old, last season in Warsaw), Vladimir Jankovic (2.02, forward, 32, last season he was with Paok Salonicco) and Mitja Nikolic (2.00, forward, 31 years old, a Slovenian who briefly played for Urania Milano).
