“There is a moment in your life when an episode makes you go back years and, like in a movie, you have images of everything you have done, seen, known, experienced in the past”. Thus begins the autobiographical book ” Once upon a time there was basketball … and beyond“, released a little while ago, published by Amazon and written by Giorgio Gandolfia “basketnauta”, who describes his life spent “sailing the various seas” of the sport.
“After the interview that appeared in the Los Angeles Times last year and after many people, friends and those who collaborated with me, had often told me that I should write a book about my experiences and episodes, in all these past years. on and around a basketball court and beyond, I decided to write Lisa Cavallini from Bologna, with the invaluable support of my graphics, “says Gandolfi.
In the prefaces that precede the first chapter, characters from basketball from the past, such as Julius “Doc. J” Erving, legendary NBA player, Russ Granik, former NBA deputy commissioner, Dino Meneghin or of the present, like two great coaches like Ettore Messina and Sergio Scariolo, among others, testified to their friendship and bond with the author.
The book was the result of research, telephone calls, interviews and testimonies to reconstruct episodes or events at times, as well as to define the exact dates, because as Gandolfi says: “I started dealing with basketball, then basketball, some geological eras ‘ago and therefore some events had been lost in time and I did not want to write inaccuracies. To this was added a photographic research and the scanning of dozens of slides and photos, inserted to revive the text and also visually witness the events I described ” .
All proceeds from the book will go directly to Baskin, born in Cremona and now widespread throughout Italy and other European countries, a way, as the author said, to give back to basketball what this sport has given it, in terms of passion and emotions and much more. His history in basketball unfolds in twelve chapters with episodes and stories that start from Cremona and then range, above all, to the United States, Europe and continue in China and the Middle East.
“Now it is extremely easy to get information, contacts, addresses thanks to the internet, computers and cell phones. Many years ago, let’s not say how many please, there were only two ways: writing letters and making phone calls. The first took at least ten days to arrive at destination, and just as many to get an answer. To call overseas, you had to go through an operator of the only telephone company at the time, Stipel, wait at least half an hour to get the communication, but even those waits were part of my story. Paraphrasing an advertisement: easy to win now with the Internet “.
There are many funny episodes in Gandolfi’s book, from those next to great basketball characters or to events, such as NBA and college finals, that occurred in his travels. As a player, at low levels as he says, to coach, journalist and writer, to marketing, his life, spent under that orange halo at 3.05 from the ground, was a journey of great emotions and with a denominator common, which transpires in every page of his book, an enormous passion for this sport.
