In four months, on 5 September, the 39th edition of the European basketball championship will get underway, which on this occasion, due to the crisis in Ukraine (originally the host country) will be played in four different nations (Croatia, France , Germany and Latvia), with the final stage in France, in Lille. And the expectation for Italy grows: with which team will we present ourselves on the parquet?
Let's start from what should be the leader of the team on the pitch, Danilo Gallinari. After being sidelined for a year and a half due to the terrible injury to his left knee on 4 April 2013, Gallo returned to the court at the start of this season and, after having to be out for another month due to a broken meniscus (this time of the right knee) which occurred to him before Christmas, he seems to have definitively put the bad luck behind him and in the last two months of the regular season he has returned to being the beacon of his Denver Nuggets, the absolute protagonist of some sensational games in terms of points, like 27 against the Lakers, 40 against Orlando and 47 against the Dallas Mavericks.
Another targeted by continuous injuries in recent seasons, in this case of a muscular nature, was certainly Andrea Bargnani, criticized too many times both by American journalists, but above all by many Italian basketball enthusiasts, attributing to him a certain lack of character and to apply himself 100% to what happens around him on the pitch (besides the fact of always pointing out that he was the first overall pick in the 2006 Draft and subsequently failed to return as such). The Wizard lived another troubled year in New York, but in the last period he managed to find a minimum of continuity, finishing with an average of 15 points per game.
Moving on to the two who finished their season last, Marco Belinelli and Gigi Datome, the difference in NBA status reached by the two cannot be denied, but for our national team they are both two essential pillars (with the former Roma who is also their captain). For the number 3 of the Spurs came the disappointment of the premature exit in the first round after 7 very balanced games against the Clippers, with the aim of repeating the triumph of twelve months ago which was immediately interrupted, but from a personal point of view it was a another very positive year for the player from San Giovanni in Persiceto.
Italy will therefore find itself in the team an increasingly decisive and confident player in its means to rely on, something that could not be said for Date, back from the second season almost never seeing the field, always relegated to the sidelines first in Detroit and from February in Boston. But we know that this won't be a problem for the bearded Gigi, who in the last few weeks of the regular season had the chance to show off, like in the last game against Milwaukee when he achieved his career high overseas by scoring 22 points, at confirms that the hand and the class are always those of the times of Rome.
These are the stars, but alongside them there could be a respectable cast: from Alessandro and Stefano Gentile to Cinciarini, Aradori and Melli, passing through Polonara and Della Valle, up to Daniel Hackett, who as director could complete a quintet really super.
