Irrationally, there are moments when you think everything is going to be easy, that everything will go well, or even better than expected. “Yes, I was illusioned a bit, even though I knew deep down that bad times, difficulties, would come. After all, seasons are meant to be lived like on a roller coaster,” Peppe Poeta says. In his first game as the Olimpia’s head coach, he wasn’t even ad head coach. Coach Ettore Messina was ill, and so it was up to him to get rid of Asvel Villeurbanne just days after a great win over Efens, in Istanbul, achieved after two overtimes. Asvel is a team that makes you play poorly, slows down the pace, and doesn’t allow you to stay in the flow. Olimpia won that game 80-72. A game of blood, sweat, and tears, played without Marko Guduric and Shavon Shields. Finally, Josh Nebo’s misadventure took place in the locker room. An accidental fall meant a night under strict observation at the hospital. He entered into the concussion protocol. Olimpia won but found itself with another player missing for the next game against Olympiacos, nonetheless. Guduric returned for that game, but Shields did not, and Bryant Dunston donned the helmet to replace Nebo. Somehow, in a memorable effort, Olimpia won again, 88-87, surviving Alec Peters’ 10-of-11 shooting night from the field. It was the fourth consecutive EuroLeague win. Poeta was two for two as a replacement coach. The next home game against Hapoel was his last as an assistant. Then came Ettore Messina’s resignation and his promotion for good.
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
— Olimpia Milano (@OlimpiaMI1936) June 19, 2026
He is a Club Legend Already
Read More 👉https://t.co/6as1IunOpR pic.twitter.com/Gkg9kwYYKh
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.
