101 Greats of European Basketball

A Cantu legend
When Bennet Cantu rejoined the
EuroLeague for a couple of seasons
earlier this decade and I
saw again the great atmosphere
in the arena there, it was time
to remember the greatest star
ever for that club, Pierluigi Marzorati.
A historic club from a small town near Milan, Cantu
has 12 international trophies – two EuroLeagues Cups,
four Saporta Cups, four Korac Cups and two Intercontinental
Cups – not to mention three Italian Leagues
and four Italian Cups. If someone only looks at the list
of the winners of the old European competitions, he
could become confused by the variety of names beside
Cantu: Forst, Squib, Ford, Gabetti, Clear. But all of them
refer to the same club, Pallacanestro Cantu. The glory
of this humble club, founded in 1936, started with its
first Italian League trophy in 1968. Borislav Stankovic,
the future Secretary General of FIBA, was on the bench
and Carlo Recalcati was the best player. The following
season, at only 17 years old, a youngster named Pierluigi
Marzorati arrived to the team. He was considered a
great prospect for Italian basketball, and with his arrival,
a golden era of Cantu basketball was ready to begin.
Twelve titles
Behind a skinny body, 1.87 meters tall, one could
find in Pierluigi Marzorati, who was born on September
12, 1952, a scorer with great technique and a passer
with heavenly court vision. Marzorati was one of those
point guards who could score 25 points if necessary or
just a couple if, on those nights, his teammates needed
only to follow his perfect floor generalship and assists.
Upon arrival in Cantu, Marzorati formed a lethal guard
duo with Recalcati. Over the next years, many good
foreigners arrived to help build the great Cantu, but
that Marzorati-Recalcati tandem, backed by several
more good Italian players, was the key to success. The
foreigners came and went, but Marzorati and his Italian
teammates were always there.
The first big success for the humble club was the
1973 Korac Cup. Under the name Forst Pallacanestro,
the team from Cantu beat Maes Pils of Belgium in two
games, with Recalcati (30 points) and Bill Drozdiak (24)
as the stars, but Marzorati was already an important
player. The following season, Forst defended the title
by beating Partizan Belgrade in the final. In Cantu, they
won 99-86 and in Belgrade, Cantu prevailed again 75-
68. That was the first time I saw Marzorati live. In 1975,
Forst took its third straight Korac Cup, this time against
FC Barcelona, winning 71-69 in Barcelona, with 16
points from Marzorati, and then by 110-85 at home as
the great guard scored 27 points. That same year, at the
EuroBasket played in Yugoslavia, I saw Marzorati with
the Italian national team and I remember a close, 69-
65 defeat to the USSR despite his 14-point effort. I saw
him again in March 1977 on neutral ground in Palma de
Mallorca, Spain, when Forst won its first Saporta Cup,
beating Radnicki Belgrade 87-86 despite a great game
by Srecko Jaric, the father of Marko Jaric, who scored
30 points. Radnicki’s second-best scorer in that game
was the late Milun Marovic (29 points), an engineer like
Marzorati, who died in 2009 in a car accident in Libya.
We met again at the 1977 EuroBasket in Liege,
Belgium, where Italy reached the semis; at the 1980
Olympics in Moscow (the final was an 86-77 Yugoslavia
101 greats of european basketball
Pierluigi Marzorati
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