When we talk about basketball in Sardinia, the word that comes to mind is only one: Dinamo. There’s no need to even add “Sassari”, because the blue and white club ends up representing the entire region, which has also taken more than a few satisfactions in recent years.
Since Dinamo obtained their first historic promotion to Serie A1 in 2010 (bringing Sardinia back to the top flight 31 years after Brill Cagliari), the team has consistently achieved important placings in the regular season, and then won an incredible domestic treble in the mid-1990s. of the 1910s, then adding a continental trophy at the end of the decade.
Meo Sacchetti and Sardinian basketball
Dinamo’s golden era, the one that began with the promotion to A1, is closely linked to the figure of Romeo “Meo” Sacchetti.
The former player of Turin, Varese and the Italian national team, silver at the Moscow Olympic Games in 1983, European gold in 1983 and bronze in the following edition, took over the Sardinian team in the summer of 2009 and immediately took it to the top league .
Dinamo immediately proved to be very competitive, reaching the playoffs in their first season in A1 also thanks to the hiring of some of the protagonists of the cycle that was about to open such as the former NBA player Travis Diener and his cousin Drake, who arrived the following year, when Sassari reached the semi-finals of the playoffs beating Virtus Bologna, only to lose against Mens Sana Siena.
The scudetto of Dinamo Sassari
The consolidation process continues and brings the first results in the 2013/14 season, which ended with the first historic title for Dinamo, the Italian Cup won by beating Olimpia Milano in the final eight, Reggiana and then Siena in the final.
The Sardinian team seems to have reached the peak of its possibilities and in the following season, thanks to important farewells such as those of the Diener cousins, it seems destined for a downsizing. But it won’t go like this, because the market brings to Sassari David Logan, who will be the best scorer of the season, a solid center like Shane Lawal, the point guard Jerome Dyson and the small forward Jeff Brooks.
These new arrivals, to which must be added the contribution of Italian senators such as Brian Sacchetti (son of Meo). Giacomo Devecchi or captain Manuel Vannuzzo, lead the Sacchetti gang to a season that is an understatement to define as historic.
Sassari’s treble
In October 2014, Dinamo won the Italian Super Cup, beating first Roma and then Milan, while in February they did an encore in the Italian Cup, defeating Cremona, Reggiana and Olimpia again in the final.
To complete the masterpiece, something is missing: the championship. And despite finishing fifth in the Regular Season, Sassari first eliminates Trento and then, surprisingly for them sport bets, Milan (first in the previous phase) to reach the final against Reggiana. It takes seven matches, with the Emilians at one point at 3-2, to give Sardinia the tricolour.
After the Sacchetti era ended in 2017, Dinamo did not undergo any downsizing, remaining one of the most important clubs in Italy.
Poz starts from Dinamo
In recent years, other important results have arrived, such as the second Scudetto final (lost in game 7 against Venezia) and the victory in the FIBA Europe Cup, both of which arrived in the 2018/19 season, which began with former NBA player Vincenzo Esposito on the bench and ended with Gianmarco Pozzecco at the helm, who began the journey that led him to become coach of the national team at Dinamo.
With “Poz” in command, Dinamo also won the Super Cup the following season, confirming itself as a great protagonist of Serie A even in the most recent editions.
The main sponsor Banco di Sardegna
Sassari’s great leap was also possible thanks to a series of important factors from an economic point of view. First of all the ownership, which is headed by Stefano Sardara, a big insurance name who bought the team in 2012.
And then the very long association with Banco di Sardegna, which has been Dinamo’s main sponsor for over thirty years now, with the team which in a certain period in the nineties also adopted the green and white colours, those of the banking institution.
Therefore representing the entire region, Dinamo has or has had among its sponsors some of the big brands most linked to the island territory, such as Ichnusa, Sella and Mosca, Tiscali, Sardaleasing and Sardares.
The Sassari team plays its home matches at the PalaSerradimigni, a structure with almost five thousand seats, which was renovated in the nineties and which hosts both the men’s and women’s sections of Dinamo. The facility was named after the Sassari basketball player Roberta Serradimigni, who died in an accident in 1996.
Dinamo Sassari’s 2023/2024 roster
Dinamo faces the 2023/24 season with a fairly renewed roster compared to the one that ended the 2022/23 season with elimination in the semifinals of the playoffs at the hands of Olimpia Milano. In fact, Alessandro Cappelletti, Stanley Whittaker, Brein Tyree, Vasilis Charalampopoulos and Stephane Gombauld have arrived in Sardinia, respectively from Verona, Wurzburg, Ostend, Pesaro and Nancy.
However, Massimo Chessa and above all the flag have left the team, Giacomo Devecchi, who left basketball after 17 years of militancy in the blue and white. Others who have had their contracts terminated include Gerald Robinson, Chris Dowe, Jamal Jones and DeShawn Stephens.
Dinamo’s wages
And what about salaries? Last season Dinamo spent around one and a half million on player wages, a figure very similar to what was spent in the first season in A1, when only the three Americans (Diener, White and Hunter) cost a total of million to the company.
This is the League’s sixth budget, which goes hand in hand with the fifth position in the regular season achieved last year.
Among the most important contracts are those of Stefano Gentile, linked to the club until 2025, but also of a born in 2000 like the Senegalese center Ousmane Diop and a 1999, the Estonian Kaspar Traier, who have accepted an extension until 2024 and who can both be deployed as “Italians” having completed the canonical four years of training in our country.
Among the new arrivals is Tyree, who in 2021 was cut by the Toronto Raptors, who had him sign a contract worth almost 900 thousand dollars per season, figures that he certainly will not be able to earn in Sardinia.
Instead, Charalampopoulos arrives from Pesaro, who at the time of Panathinaikos earned 350 thousand euros per season. He certainly falls within Sassari’s parameters, i.e. spending wisely for excellent results…
*The images in the article are distributed by AP Photo.
2023-09-26 19:21:37
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