Βy Giorgos Adamopoulos/ info@eurohoops.net

Back in 2020, Eurohoops published an open letter from coach Ettore Messina asking at the time for better cooperation between EuroLeague and FIBA amid the COVID pandemic. It’s already 2024, and the future of European basketball is still in question with the NBA knocking on the door.

And in a long conversation with Eurohoops, coach Messina once more repeated his worries about the future of the sport in the old continent: “I’m concerned because I would not like to go back to 2000 when we had two leagues”.

As he explained: “For the future of basketball, I think that the most important thing is first of all, to try to find a solution and some kind of let’s say, common plan with FIBA and NBA. Because at some level when Adam Silver talks about something in Europe, considering their power and economical, technical, whatever assets and what they put together in Africa, you know, I’m concerned. I would like to have something in common in the future”.

For the legendary Italian coach, who has been on both sides of the Atlantic as a special consultant of the Lakers during the Kobe Bryant era and also as an assistant of coach Popovich in the Spurs, Europe lost a great chance in the past: “I think we missed a huge chance 15 years ago to become the development league of the NBA. I think that that was a mistake in envisioning the future. If we had become, let’s say not in a diminishing way, but the G League, the league where players could have developed, now we would not be in this situation where the market is closed, where it’s very difficult to get players and where more or less our future it’s a concern because we are becoming an aging league”. 

For Messina, getting synergies is a must for the sport: “I don’t think that in basketball you can see any organization, FIBA, Euroleague or the NBA like enemies because that would be stupid. I think we are a microcosmos compared to the rest of the world. Compared with soccer, basketball is a small unit and I think we need to do our best to have better relationships and more balance”.

“Financial Fair Play is completely different than salary cap”

Ettore Messina who is also the president of basketball operations in Milan – more on that later – he also talked about the new financial rules of the EuroLeague: “Financial Fair Plays is one thing. It can’t be confused with the salary cap, it’s completely two different things. The essence of cap in the United States, in the NBA, is that there is a pot where all the money coming from the tv rights and the revenues go and then they are shared equally between all the teams, which is not the case in the Euroleague. So there are a lot of things that have to be addressed before we can discuss about that”. 

The problem is not the rule itself, but how you enforce it: “For every rule that you implement, the most important thing is not the rule itself, is if you can enforce the rule. I give you an example. In the NBA, if any owner decides to cross the rule as it happened sometime some years ago with a couple of owners, the NBA, don’t ask me how, but probably they have a great office that works on this kind of thing, they catch you immediately and they punish you with fine taking away draft picks and whatever. So what is the possibility for the EuroLeague to control that under the table nothing happens?”

Also, the fact that taxation doesn’t apply to the numbers, creates a vacuum: “If we talk about numbers, if those numbers are net, it’s clear that in some country the gross figure becomes double, in some other countries become much, much less. So that’s already an unfair situation. It’s good that we try to aim at something, to equalize the level and to allow maybe teams with smaller budgets to be competitive to win, because that’s the essence of sport. But rather than dream big, I think we have to concentrate on those steps or those decisions that can be applied and can also be double-checked. Otherwise, we talk too much of theory”.

Pop, Kobe, Duncan, and the biggest paradox

In a talk that lasted for half an hour, it’s obvious that coach Messina’s basketball philosophy, and his experiences with Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Gregg Popovich, and also Thodoris Papaloukas were among the main topics.

“I was lucky to experience two very different kinds of leaderships in the NBA”, Messina says about Duncan and Kobe, while revealing the most important thing about Pop: “His short memory when a player makes mistakes”. 

He also explains that in some cases “it’s a challenge because you have to be at the level of those players”, and Theo Papaloukas in CSKA Moscow is one of them.

Messina also favors the implementation of playoffs in the semifinals and the finals of the EuroLeague instead of the Final Four and also touches on subjects like talent, success, and also his situation in Milan and his dual role.

As he elaborates: “Look, besides, besides the job title, do you think coach Obradovic is not having the final word on the players that they get, or Sarunas Jasikevicius or any other coach? So it’s just a matter of job titles, it’s a matter of having the last word”.

Messina also talked about the real meaning of analytics, how to deal with players, and the pressure of being a coach and “looking like crazy” on camera.

However, the most important takeaway about his philosophy after all those years of experience is the following paradox: “The biggest paradox in sports is that everybody evaluates even ourselves, everything based on the result. And a lot of times you win, but you did not deserve it, or you lost, and you did not deserve it. So being able to analyze the performance a little bit more neutral, there are many times that you should be able to say, okay, today we lost. But if we keep doing this, we will win games and vice versa. Today we won, but we have to be careful because if we play like this, we’re gonna lose games. But the way it is, especially in these days, where what you say and how you look is much more important than what you do. Because of the media, because of the social media, you can see that with the young people, our sons. So, unfortunately, this is the reality. And so that final result… win by one, great, lose by one, disaster. And that’s scary”.