101 Greats of European Basketball

medal in the 1975 EuroBasket in Belgrade; a silver
medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics; and, most of all,
the gold medal at the 1983 EuroBasket in Nantes. He
was part of a great Italian team that year with Pierluigi
Marzorati, Marco Bonamico, Ario Costa, Renato Villalta,
Antonello Riva, Romeo Sacchetti, Roberto Brunamonti,
Alberto Tonut and Renzo Vecchiato. Meneghin finished
in the tourney with 11.3 points per game, but he was a
player whose real importance could never be revealed
by stats alone. He was a leader and an authority for his
teammates, rivals, fans and even the referees.
The most emotional moment of his career was probably
on November 15, 1990, when, playing for Trieste,
he had to face his former Varese team, where Andrea
Meneghin, a 16-year old kid, was playing. It was a fatherand-son
duel. The father won 93-89 as Dino scored 6
points and pulled down 4 boards while Andrea didn’t
score in 7 minutes on the court. Andrea made his debut
in the first team at the same age as his father did and
scored 15 points when Varese won the Italian League
title on May 6, 1999, with a 77-71 victory against Benetton
Treviso. That same year, Italy won its second gold
medal in a EuroBasket in France, with Andrea Meneghin
playing a key role, averaging 11.2 points in more than
30 minutes per game. Dino was on the bench as the
team manager and the coach was Tanjevic, an important
man for the two Meneghins.
In 2003, Dino Meneghin entered the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield and thus
became the second Italian to achieve that honor, after
Cesare Rubini. In 2010 Meneghin was inducted into the
FIBA Hall of Fame. He has also served as president of
the Italian Basketball Federation in an effort to take Italy
back to the level it had been at when he was playing,
when he was as great as a basketball Dino-saur!
101 greats of european basketball
Dino Meneghin
M