ETTORE MESSINA_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

Ettore
Messina
The first
EuroLeague
champion
Ettore Messina will always have a place in
the history of our game and, for me: he
will always be the first coach to ever win
the EuroLeague in its new era.
It was May 10, 2001. Kinder Bologna,
coached by Messina, and Tau Ceramica
Vitoria were contesting the fifth and decisive game
of the final series in the Italian city. For its first season,
the new EuroLeague – organized and owned by
the clubs – had decided to go with a playoff format
rather than a Final Four, which returned the following
season and remains to this day. The formula for the
best-of-five final series was 2-2-1, and Tau had made
it out of Bologna with a 1-1 tie. However, it still went to
the final game because Kinder also managed to pull
off a road win in Vitoria.
The last game ended 82-74 for Messina’s team,
Kinder. Antoine Rigaudeau scored 18 points, Manu
Ginobili and Marko Jaric netted 16 each, Rashard
Griffith 14 and a young Matjaz Smodis 5. On the
other side, Elmer Bennett led Tau with 24 points and
Fabricio Oberto scored 15. The Tau roster also had
names like Luis Scola, Victor Alexander and Saulius
Stombergas. That’s what I call two major lineups!
Coach at 17 years old
When they are 17 years old, most basketball
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Vladimir Stankovic
people think about their playing careers, but Ettore
Messina was already on the bench, coaching young
players at Reyer Venezia.
In fact, Messina, who was born on September 30,
1959 in the Italian town of Catania, remembers how his
career as a player came to an end. His coach at the time,
Tonino Zorzi, was brutally honest with him, saying, “I
don’t think you can ever be a good player, but when I
see you coaching the young kids, I really think you can
be a good coach.” It was a spot-on insight, and the club
paid for Messina’s first year at coaching school.
In an e-mail he sent me from San Antonio, where
he is working as an assistant coach with the Spurs,
Messina remembered all his teachers, right back to
those early days. He recognizes that he learned a
great deal from Massimo Mangano, Piero Bucchi and,
of course, greats Sandro Gamba and Dan Peterson.
Messina also highlights an “incredible experience
with Kreso Cosic, who was the one that opened my
eyes to the importance of smaller players and threepoint
shooting.”
Messina also wrote that he was fortunate to have
been able to talk many times with „Professor” Aleksandar
Nikolic, a true wise man who “was very kind to
me” and to whom “I owe a lot.”
As the very polite person he is, neither does Messina
forget about all the directors who put their money
on him when he was still very young. He was the director
of player development for Virtus Bologna at 23,
head coach at 29 and Italian national team coach at 33.
Messina’s true career started in 1989 when he
became head coach at Virtus Bologna, an ambitious
club that was expanding. In his rookie season, Messina
already won his first title: the Saporta Cup. In the
final, played on March 13, 1990, in Florence, Virtus defeated
Real Madrid 79-74. Michael Ray Richardson led
the winners with 29 points on 4-for-6 shooting from
behind the arc. Claudio Coldebella added 16 points
and Roberto Brunamonti had a key role in running the
team. Real Madrid coach George Karl had to admit
defeat, despite strong efforts from Anthony Frederick
(21 points) and Mike Anderson (20).
The next goal for Virtus was the EuroLeague, but
first Messina and fans would have to wait a little bit
and suffer some disappointments. In the 1991-92
season, Partizan Belgrade beat Virtus in their quarterfinal
series by winning the decisive game in Bologna.
However, that was when Messina discovered a young
player by the name of Predrag Danilovic, who would
go on to become one of the most important players in
Bologna over the next few years.
In Italy, the titles started to arrive: the Italian Cup
in 1990 and the Italian League title in 1993. But the
fans wanted the European crown. That moment finally
arrived in April 1998. Bologna had a fearsome
team with great Italian players like Augusto Binelli,
Alessandro Abio, Alessandro Frosini, Riccardo Morandotti
and Claudio Crippa, plus some good foreigners
in Rigaudeau, Rasho Nesterovic, Hugo Sconochini,
Zoran Savic and Danilovic, who was back for a second
time after a stint in the NBA.
In the first phase, Bologna showed its intentions
with a 9-1 record to finish first, and after the second
phase its record was 13-3. In the playoffs, Messina’s
men swept Estudiantes Madrid 2-0 in the first round.
After that, the victim was cross-town rival TeamSystem
Bologna, also by 2-0, which was worth a ticket for
the Final Four in Barcelona.
In the semifinals, Bologna thrashed Partizan 83-
61, with Savic as the leader with 23 points. In the
title game, the victim was AEK Athens 58-44 thanks
to some fierce defense. The few points scored were
shared among many players: Rigaudeau 14, Danilovic
13, Sconochini 10, Savic 7, Nesterovic 6. It was a team
success, one of Messina’s features, even though he
always liked to have a star on the team to take responsibility
in key moments. Danilovic was one: he had a
four-point play against Dominique Wilkins on May 31,
1998, to come from 4 points behind and send the
game to overtime, allowing Bologna to win the Italian
League against Teamsystem.
Eye and courage for youngsters
Messina is a very meticulous coach, preparing
games to the last detail. But if one of his features
stands out it is a clinical eye to spot talent, along with
Ettore Messina
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Vladimir Stankovic
the courage and patience to believe in youngsters
and give them the time to return his trust. There is a
long list of stars who reached glory as Messina pupils
at one point or another: Nesterovic, Ginobili, Jaric and
Smodis in Bologna; Nikita Kurbanov, Alexey Shved
and Andrey Vorontsevich at CSKA Moscow; Sergio
Llull, Sergio Rodriguez, Ante Tomic and Nikola Mirotic
in Real Madrid, to name just a few.
His third and fourth EuroLeague titles arrived in
2006 and 2008 as coach of CSKA Moscow. He came
out on top in the 2006 Final Four in Prague against
Maccabi Tel Aviv (73-69), and emotions ran high
because it was CSKA’s return to the throne after 35
years. The title was dedicated to the great master
Alexander Gomelskiy, who had passed away shortly
before the start of that season. That CSKA team was
a force to be reckoned with, and it had a leader in
Theodoros Papaloukas (18 points and 7 assists in the
final).
Two years later, Euroleague Basketball celebrated
50 years of European basketball competitions at the
Final Four in Madrid, and CSKA defeated Maccabi
again, 81-77. Trajan Langdon was named MVP thanks
to his 21 points, and he was supported by J.R. Holden
(14 points), Ramunas Siskauskas (13), Smodis (13)
and David Andersen (13). Messina was named Coach
of the Year in the competition, an award bearing the
name of Gomelskiy.
After much success in CSKA, Messina moved to
Spain to join Real Madrid. For reasons that were never
quite clear, his work never produced the desired fruits,
and it was the only time in his career that Messina resigned,
stepping down in March 2011. The following
season he was Mike Brown’s assistant coach at the
Los Angeles Lakers before, during the summer of
2012, Messina returned to CSKA and managed to take
the team back to two Final Fours, although another
title could not be secured: in 2013 in London, Olympiacos
was the better team in the semifinals, 69-52; a
year later in Milan, also in the semifinals, CSKA fell to
Maccabi 67-68 in unbelievable fashion, a game that is
maybe the sourest memory of Messina’s career.
In 2014, Messina returned to the NBA, this time to
San Antonio to be Gregg Popovich’s assistant. During
the pre-season, due to Popovich’s absence, Messina
became the first European-born coach of an NBA team
in an official game. He was subsequently the coach
of record in two regular season games in November
2014, against Indiana (106-100) and Sacramento
(112-104), and later against Indiana again (91-99) and
Minnesota (116-91). It made for a memorable sight,
seeing a European give instructions to stars like Tim
Duncan, Tony Parker and his former pupil in Bologna,
Ginobili.
Messina has won a total of 25 club titles: four
EuroLeagues, one Saporta Cup, four Italian Leagues,
five Russian Leagues, seven Italian Cups, two Russian
Cups and two VTB League titles.
He was also the Italian national team coach between
1993 and 1997, winning the silver medal at the
1997 FIBA EuroBasket in Barcelona. He lost to Yugoslavia
by 49-61 in the final against another coaching
legend, Zeljko Obradovic, who has been Messina’s
greatest rival over the last two decades.
I think Messina’s philosophy could fit into one sentence:
“The coach must be a good person; someone
who respects everyone else, but who also must have
enough strength to make everyone else respect him.”
These are some of his other statements regarding
his job:
- „A great player or a great team deliver under maximum
pressure.“
- „As a coach, you need three consistent players.“
- „The best players must have basketball empathy
for their teammates.“
And another about ethics and responsibility:
- „They do not depend on your salary, but on how
you see your life in the gym.“
He once said: “You cannot make everyone happy
throughout your life. But if most people respect you,
maybe you did something right,“
And he didn’t just do “something”, but a lot for
basketball, his country and the clubs for which he has
worked.
Ettore Messina
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