Basketball, Scariolo flies to Toronto to talk to the Raptors: he could be the first European coach in the NBA

With the championship final against the “usual” Milan in his trolley, passenger Sergio Scariolo boarded a plane for Toronto. The Raptors, the first and only non-American franchise to win an NBA title (2019), called him directly, in the middle of the Italian playoffs, for the last and decisive audition for the position of head coach: it’s not a exclusive interview, because in addition to the coach of Virtus Bologna and reigning world and European champions Spain, Jordi Fernandez will also be received, Mike Brown’s current assistant coach at the Sacramento Kings after having played the same role at the Cleveland Cavs, at Denver Nuggets and the Nigerian national team. Here they are the two candidates still remaining in the running, after a skimming of a dozen other suitors.

The first contact between the Raptors and Scariolo, with the endorsement of Virtus, had taken place in Bologna just before the playoffs: a meeting that shouldn’t have gone too bad, given the new appointment of these hours. The two-way ballot was served: the expert coach from Brescia, who already worked for the Toronto Raptors as Nick Nurse’s assistant between 2018 and 2021, against the rampant forty-year-old Spaniard. A 62-year-old citizen of the world with a palmares of 18 titles as a coach, inaugurated in 1990 in Pesaro and enriched with Baskonia, Real Madrid, Malaga, Toronto Raptors (as deputy), Spain and Virtus Bologna, or risk and stake everything on a promising deputy waiting waiting for the first job as head coach?

The real news, regardless of the outcome of the ballot, consists in the unprecedented ending of a head coach with a European passport in his pocket finally taking a seat on a bench of an NBA team: a historic turning point, touched more than a few times in the past by Ettore Messina, interviewed by more than a few franchises for a leading role during his experience as Popovich’s assistant at the San Antonio Spurs. Scariolo’s program, expected on Friday from match-1 at the Assago Forum of the third consecutive Scudetto final between his Virtus Bologna and Olimpia Milano under the Ettore Messina license plate, foresees the last interview with the top executives of the Raptors and the return to Italy as early as tomorrow evening. Time to expose his plans and play his cards to win the “duel” with the antagonist Jordi Fernandez.

Soon, in the space of a few days, the announcement from Toronto should arrive on who will be chosen. Who knows if for the start of the tricolor saga, “Don Sergio” will already know his future and on Saturday, between the first two matches, he will be able to distract himself only in front of the television with his Inter’s Champions League final, without waiting for updates from Canada .