Italian basketball cup. The magical and unrepeatable moment of Germani Brescia

If the Lioness, instead of being a team from Brescia, were an American university in Hollywood, they would already be preparing a film about her feat. Because it is one of those fairy tales that only sport can tell with the Cinderella of the tournament, seeded eighth out of eight, who takes the Italian Cup among the colored confetti in front of 11,936 spectators at the end of four days of matches set the all-time record in the history of the competition that is the flagship of the Basketball League. And it would be a beautiful film with a lot of history in history with Amedeo Della Valle, the man of the match, the best scorer in the final, who after lifting the cup, dedicates it in tears to a dear friend who has been gone for a month and watches and protects it from up there. Inside himself this boy born in Alba, not far from this Turin building, just under thirty years ago, must have really found something special. An energy that allowed him to retaliate blow by blow to Marco Belinelli’s slingshots, thehighlanders of our basketball that in 64′ in the three days of the cup scored 65 points with 53.3 percent from three. Della Valle, a son of art, a player who grew up in America after making his debut in Casale, traveled far and wide across our country (and not only that, he was also in Gran Canaria and Budocnost) finding only in Brescia the The right air and atmosphere to recover from the rejection of Olimpia which in 2020 had abandoned him to his fate, another misunderstood by Ettore Messina. Della Valle with his 26 points led Germani Brescia to the first trophy in its history in what for Sergio Scariolo, the beaten coach of Virtus, was a bit like a game of the heart because he is a son of Brescia and in this team he had begun to take his first steps on the bench inspiring Baron Sales.

But this is a final in which all the stories intertwine: Della Valle was the king of the game in the city that had been the beginning of a good career for dad Carlo. Stories of men like that of Alessandro Magro, the Castelfiorentino coach who in four days beat two icons of our basketball like Ettore Messina and Sergio Scariolo. With the organization of the game, the defensive energy, the audacity of his players he managed to never let his legs shake even when it seemed that Milan in game one and Bologna in the final had taken the game back. “It was a very serious match in defense, a happy evening also in attack – explained the coach – This allowed us to lead the match, until they decided to pass into the area and we stopped. We tried to figure it out, we relied on talented players and Amedeo played an incredible game. Massinburg and Petrucelli are very important, but a note also for Burns who gave a lot in the absence of Cobbins. We were here after a difficult moment, closer to last place than the playoff zone, a period of justified controversy and criticism”.

Nevertheless the designated victim, destined to return home immediately after the face-to-face with the Italian champions, has found his magical and unrepeatable moment: “We knew we had to come here forgetting all the past, playing almost a bubble – explained the coach – winning at this moment was even more beautiful, with enormous humility. I think this cup has two fundamental values: won by beating two incredible teams like Milan and Bologna by punishing them with their weapons, the defence. The second is that Brescia hadn’t won anything to date, so what we all did will be written indelibly in history”. Yes in history. In the great little story of Italian basketball that had the party and enjoyed it in Turin by filling a building that is not small and flooding the web with stories built on purpose by the influencers hired. But it was nice to see the Italian players as protagonists. Della Valle, but also Belinelli and even Burns or Hackett. Unfortunately, not first-timers, but examples for the young people who watch them. By doing things right and seriously, they know that in Serie A there will be space and glory for them too.

Ps: there are those who suggest that having lost against Brescia, Scariolo should also be mistreated as we did against Messina the other day. But it is the weight of expectations that crushes the coach from Milan. From Olimpia, as he himself said at the beginning of the season, he is expected to win everything and always win.