101 Greats of European Basketball

The eternal
champion
In a hypothetical quiz of European basketball history
knowledge, these could be 10 questions:
1. What player spent 28 years in a very competitive
league?
2. What player won 10 European trophies?
3. What player reached 10 straight EuroLeague finals
and won five of them?
4. What player won four Intercontinental Cups?
5. What player played against his son in a league game?
6. What player and his 16-year younger son played together
and became European champions with their
national team?
7. What player and his son were national club champions
with the same club?
8. What player was the first European to be chosen in
the NBA draft?
9. What player was a member of the national team, a
national team manager and president of his country’s
federation?
10. What Italian player is featured both in the Springfield
and FIBA Halls of Fame?
I could add some more to the list, but the answer
would always be Dino Meneghin. His brilliant career
cannot be compared to anyone or anything. He is an
unprecedented example in the history of our sport and
probably of any sport. Nobody, be it as a player or as a
director, has ever lasted so long and given so much to
basketball as Dino “Nacionale”.
Debut at 16 years old
The sporting career of a young, tall and strong Dino
Meneghin started in the late 1950s, when the young
man was with his older brother Ren-zo on the athletics
track at Varese stadium. Renzo was a middle-distance
runner while Dino, because of his physical build, was
to choose between the shot put and discus. But destiny,
as so many other times, changed a life forever. In
1963, there was a basketball tournament among a few
schools in Varese. The physical education teacher at Dino’s
school was Nicola Messina, who also happened to
be collaborating with Ignis Varese, the local basketball
club. As he was looking for players for the team to play
in the tournament, Messina took a long look at Dino, a
tall kid with broad shoulders.
“Have you ever played basketball before?” was the
question from Messina to Dino. “No, never” was the
answer. “Run back and forth and do some moves,” the
coach’s said next. A couple of sprints were enough for
Messina to recognize a talent. His next words were:
“Come to practice tomorrow with a pair of basketball
shoes.”
In his autobiography, “Passi da Gigante”, Meneghin
joyfully recalls how he went to his mother to ask for
“scarpe da basket” (basketball shoes) and the answer
he got from his mom was: “Dino, what is basketball?”
Only three years later, on November 20, 1966, in a
game between Ignis Varese and Cassera Bologna that
his team won 76-54, Dino Meneghin’s name appeared
for the first time on a box score. He was 16 years and 11
months old. Not even Dino himself could have imagined
then that a brilliant career that would last 28 years and
earn him 36 trophies was just beginning.
Dino Meneghin is not, by any means, the biggest
natural talent that I have ever seen. But nobody ever
101 greats of european basketball
Dino Meneghin
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