The blue that won’t be there. Paolo Banchero has not betrayed anyone

Maybe it’s because it’s such a clean name. But basically, if your name is Paolo Banchero you can only play for the Italian national team – even if you were born in Seattle, raised in the United States, speak only English and play in the NBA. At least this was the blind illusion that the leaders of our basketball had clung to for years. “We want him at the World Cup”, he said to himself, and away with the proclamations, pumping in the press, worship of the new myth and big smiles. “He even took a picture of himself with the blue tank top”, gloated last September Gianni Petrucci, president of the Fip. Then days ago The Athletic announces that the Orlando Magic winger will play the World Cup next August. But with Team Usa. And so the red carpet turns red shame. With Petrucci blessing the social pillory: “Banchero has betrayed us”.

It looks like the image of the realist and immutable village, where every action of the individual is necessarily “with us or against us”. Except that the infamous Paolo, twenty years old for the record, had never even been to the village until this month. Or in Italy. Nor the father from whom he inherited the hotly contested surname. “We’ll go there soon”, the first pick in the 2022 Draft announced in the spring. And so the two Bancheros, senior and junior, really flew to Liguria – from where their great-grandparents had emigrated at the beginning of the last century – to then meet their personal sponsors in Milan. Other promises instead – or simple declarations, for those with ears to hear – the player has not kept. It’s true, Banchero claimed that he “wanted to help Italy qualify for the Olympics”. Then he reiterated that he can’t wait to “play with the national team. If not this summer, next.”

Here you are. His guilt, assuming that dreaming is, ends here. Unless the aggravating circumstances are the double passport and – even worse, these days – the double stars and stripes / tricolor flag on one’s social profiles. But Banchero never signed anything outside of his Magic contract. He’s been courted to death, and what teenager doesn’t like the flattery of an entire country. But then he turned pro. AND maybe he didn’t expect it either, to close his first NBA year with an average of 20 points, 6.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists, dragging a mattress franchise to a handful of wins from the play-in and closing the season with Rookie of the year award. In short, as a probable champion of the future.

Anyone who loves basketball, seeing the basketball that Banchero plays, understood very well how it would end. “I’m not surprised by his choice,” Simone Fontecchio told the Gazzetta, also fresh from his first, not easy, season overseas. “This year he hasn’t made who knows what declarations of love for the blue shirt. In the past, it was the words of a little boy.” While coach Pozzecco explains that “his point of view, from a future Duke player to an NBA star, has changed exponentially in a very short time: that’s why we would have respected every decision he made”. To then add the pebble that offended Petrucci so much. “We were disappointed, however: Paolo could have at least warned us”. Good manners, uagliò! ‘I’m rude American.