Have you ever thought about how many similarities there are between Serie A and NBA? No? Do you think there aren’t any? Ok, maybe you are right. However, if you really commit yourself, you will discover that something is there. For example, there are 3 Italian coaches who have great similarities with 3 NBA coaches: Carlo “Charlie” Recalcati, Gianmarco Pozzecco and Simone Pianigiani.
Charlie Recalcati – Gregg Popovich
Easy, right? We are talking about two who have written the history of Serie A and NBA respectively. Yet they still train. One, Pop, is at full capacity, despite his 73 years. The other, Charlie, almost 77 springs behind him, has just decided to return to the bench to help his “godson” Pozzecco with Italbasket after retiring from basketball played 4 years ago. These two “gurus”, with due proportions, have given a lot to our sport, obtaining enormous sporting results.
Gianmarco Pozzecco – Jason Kidd
Former point guard, young coaches, super exuberant and coaches not at all traditional, like when
they called the ball-in-hand schemes. Both have not yet completely removed the tank top, shorts and shoes. They live in the locker room more as teammates than as coaches: we know how much Pozzecco is a friend – for example – of Marco Spissu and of the special relationship that was immediately created between Kidd and Luka Doncic. For them, the players are children even before the professionals who have to train to improve day after day from a basketball point of view. Will they be able to win with Italy and with Dallas? As Italians and Europeans we hope so!
Simone Pianigiani – Erik Spoelstra
We are not crazy. There is a logic behind this parallelism. Now we tell you. Both are “prophets at home” and both started from the very bottom and then won everything with their respective team.
“Coach Spo”, after an interlude in Germany at Hertener Löwen, arrived in Miami as a video coordinator, really the last wheel of a coaching staff, especially in that period, yet he managed to win 2 NBA titles with the Heat.
Simone Pianigiani is a “product” of Ferdinando Minucci, as he likes to define it. He, born and raised in Siena, began coaching in the Mens Sana youth teams and finished his green-and-white adventure with 6 Scudetti won (1 revoked), 5 Italian Super Cups and 4 Italian Cups (1 revoked).
We hope you liked this idea of our article, it is clearly a game, a style exercise in our opinion very nice. We have convinced you that Serie A and NBA have some points in common?
Read also: Virtus Bologna steps forward for Papapetrou, but there is Partizan Belgrade
Born in 1996. Collaborator for BasketUniverso since March 31, 2014. Graduated in Humanities for Communication at the State University of Milan. In love with sports and his stories, with a predilection for basketball and football.
