The 2013/14 season is the one during which the Olimpia’s project finally explodes. The team has been rebuilt over the summer with the general idea of having a warrior mentality, a lot of hunger. Luca Banchi is the new coach, coming from Grosseto, 48, a natural born winner. David Moss, Samardo Samuels, Curtis Jerrells and then Gani Lawal and Daniel Hackett are among the top acquisitions. Keith Langford has the best season of his career (Euroleague top scorer, All-Euroleague first-team, Italian league playoffs leading scorer). Alessandro Gentile – named the best Under 22 player in Seria A – explodes.
Olimpia wins 21 consecutive games in the league, all the home regular season games and all the games in the second half of the season. But the team has also a great Euroleague outing. It makes it to the Top 16, where it wins 10 games out of 14, eight in a row, destroying perennial contenders like Olympiacos (twice), Panathinaikos, Fenerbahce (twice) and Barcelona. People go crazy: all the attendance records and gate receipts are devastated. 11 times the Mediolanum Forum is sold out.
In Euroleague, the great ride comes to a stop in the quarterfinals, 1-3 against Maccabi who eventually won the championship, playing the entire series with no Gentile (injured) and Keith Langford just recovered after another tough injury. A big game 1 is ruined in the last 27 seconds. Maccabi advances. But the message is loud and clear: Red Shoes Are Back. In the Italian playoffs the pressure is sky-high but with a great toughness and mental strength, all the obstacles are removed: Pistoia is eliminated 3-2, Sassari 4-2 by winning three road games with Gentile scoring at least 20 points for three consecutive games, Siena is beaten 4-3 coming back from 2-3. Curtis Jerrells’ big basket at the buzzer in Game 6 is crucial while Alessandro Gentile, the youngest captain in Olimpia’s history, is the Finals’ Mvp. After 18 years the Italian title is back where it belongs. In the great city of Milano.
The following year is very unconsistent: the team is good enough to win at one point 20 straight Italian League game but shows a disturbing tendency of losing the decisive games. It lost the Supercup final in Sassari against the home team then the Italy Cup and after a nice but not great Euroleague season was eliminated in the semifinal of the Italian League once more by Sassari. After trailing 3-1, Olimpia ties the series but lose game 7 at home. The disappointment sparks the birth of a new cycle. The head coach Luca Banchi leaves the team and so happens with Daniel Hackett, David Moss and Samardo Samuels. Livio Proli takes the club under his wing, appoints Jasmin Repesa as the new coach and the team is centered around Alessandro Gentile.
In 2016, Olimpia who became the first European team to play in an NBA arena (playing and winning one of two games of the so-called Euroclassic against Maccabi, staged in Chicago and New York), using the addition of Mantas Kalnietis, Rakim Sanders and Esteban Batista interrupted a 20-year drought and won the Italy Cup. Sanders was named MVP of the Final Eight and then he repeated as playoffs’ MVP for the 27th title. Olimpia swept Trento in the first round and then edged Venezia and Reggio Emilia in six games. The following season started with another win, in the Supercup against Avellino. Kruno Simon deserved an invidual award by being named MVP. The team, reinforced by Ricky Hickman and Zoran Dragic, also won its first Super Cup (Kruno Simon MVP) and got again the Italian Cup, during the Final Eight in Rimini, where it defeated Sassari in the championship game and won the trophy. Ricky Hickman was the MVP. But the playoffs of the Italian league in 2017 signaled the end of an era. Olimpia is eliminated in the semifinals by Trento. Repesa leaves the team. Simone Pianigiani is hired in his place. Olimpia wins the Super Cup two more times, 2017 and 2018, and also wins the Italian championship, the title number 28, with Andrew Goudelock MVP. In Game 5, series tied 2-2, against Trento, he executes the second block of the entire season, but it is the one that decides the game and as a matter of fact the championship. The project goes on for another year, including a Super Cup triumph in Brescia (Vlado Micov gets the MVP award), but in the Euroleague, despite the addition of Mike James, the team does not reach the playoffs, in the playoffs of the Italian league it is eliminated in the semifinals by Sassari. Hence the end of an era linked to Livio Proli as a prominent managerial figure, and Simone Pianigiani as a coach. Another era begins.
