Damn now I wonder what the all time roster would look like? OJ had a lil jumpshot back in the day I think
Spoiler […] Varese, with Scola as its controlling owner and Michael Arcieri, a former Knicks executive, as its general manager, could be on its way back to glory by a duo bringing the NBA to Italy. Not just in personnel, but also in philosophy and reach. The club lured an NBA assistant to be its head coach, replacing the archetypal European iron-fisted coach with one who has direct ties to Moreyball. Meanwhile, Scola has leaned on advice from executives from those 2010s Rockets for which he once played and embraced analytics as he tries to shake up a team that has lingered at the middle and bottom end of the standings since it was promoted back to Italy’s top league in 2009. So far, this season, the results have supported them. Varese is out to a 6-3 start and tied for fourth in the Serie A standings. It is a promising beginning for a franchise that has only placed in the top 10 three times over the previous decade. Scola, too, must be validated. Varese was to be a stop-over, a coda to a long and illustrious career. It has become a new passion project for a hands-on owner who still gets into the gym to work out against his players when he could have just retired and finally relaxed. “Some days I ask myself that question,” he said. “I don’t know the answer to that. I just wanted to do this. I wanted to do a basketball project.” […] Scola has leaned on old Rockets executives for advice. He said he speaks with Rosas frequently and tries to run most important decisions by him. He talks to Sam Hinkie sporadically. He and Philadelphia 76ers president Daryl Morey go back-and-forth too. Morey, who calls Scola a “basketball genius,” asks him about team culture, and Scola asks about running a team. Still, Scola talks openly about how much he has to learn. He jokes that when he was near retirement, at 41, he was quite old for his job, and as soon as he took over as CEO, he became very young for his new one. He tried to ease into it but found that Varese needed more from him. “Playing is not the same as being in the front office,” he said. “I discovered that very quickly. Maybe you understand basketball playing but from the optics you have in the office and behind the desk in the office is very different.” The new management has tried to infuse an NBA mindset without preening about it. There is an emphasis on a player-first approach, and a more relaxed environment. Matt Brase, a former NBA assistant and the grandson of legendary Arizona coach Lute Olson, was named head coach of Scola’s team. Galbiati, a former head coach in the league, was brought in as an assistant. They hired a former Japanese national team assistant to head player development. The influx of new faces has been met with a shift in office dynamics, with Arcieri and Scola trying to sift through the cultural differences. […] When Brase started watching film of the Italian league while he went through the interview process, he saw a more physical sport, with more post-ups and grabbing and holding. He did not know the referees were touchier too. He earned a technical foul in a preseason game after asking why there wasn’t a foul call after a play. Brase was bemused and confused; he doesn’t even speak Italian. But he did receive a text after the game from an NBA executive who knows the league: “Welcome to Italy.” It took some time to adjust to the roads and how to navigate the city’s roundabouts, and to reconfigure the practice schedule. Brase wanted to practice during the afternoons but found out that restaurants in the area shut down mid-day and players need somewhere to eat lunch. Varese now starts at 10:30 in the morning and is done by 1:30, just before the shops close. “Living in Italy, I’ve told a couple of people, it’s not just anything is wrong,” Brase said. “But it’s just a little bit different than what you’re used to.” Scola told Brase that the sport needs to be fun and to imbue joy into the team, so he has added music before practice and during drills — an outlier from the Italian norm. Galbiati has been the head coach of two Serie A teams, and the change in style at Varese is apparent. In his new organization, there is more of an emphasis on politeness, on happiness. When Varese lost on a buzzer-beater early in the season, he was struck by the smiling faces at the facility the next day. “That’s not usual,” he said. “For two days in Italy you used to stay sad.” Yet, he has come around to it. The use of analytics is irregular in the league as well. Italian teams use numbers, of course, Galbiati said, but not to the degree Varese does. Brase has been fluent in this since he was in Houston, growing up in what he calls the “Daryl Morey lab” and using numbers to make decisions. There, he said the team’s analysts were the smartest people in the organization; it became the coach’s job to get the team to play in a way that got the end result they needed. Varese hired its own analytics analyst and Scola is a strong believer, as is Arcieri. The team now plays in a way reminiscent of the NBA Morey has catalyzed. Brase wants them to get to the rim, to the free throw line, and to take 3s. The team leads Serie A in points, 3s, and shots per game, is second in free throw attempts, and is third in assists. “They try to do something different,” Galbiati said. “Basketball is basketball in every part of the world. Talking about analytics, talking about points per possession, talking about many different things that are usually different than in Europe. They really believe in that. … The approach to the game is different. The approach to every single practice is different.” When Brase first came to Italy, he landed in Milan and took a car straight to the practice facility. No Varese players had arrived yet but the organization’s Serie B team was there, comprised of Gen Z ballers, few older than 20. Scola was on the court with them. “This is awesome,” Brase said. “What other owner is playing full court?” Scola has earned a reputation as a hands-on owner. He is involved at every level of the team, buoyed by three decades in professional basketball and an Olympic gold medal. After practice, he is known to change into his compression shorts and dive into player development sessions with the team’s big men, helping on their pick-and-pop and pick-and-roll games, lathered up from the workouts. “I like to sweat,” he said. “I like to play basketball. I just like to hang around when my schedule allows it… I wish I can do that more. It’s more fun than a desk job.” That role has been time-consuming. Scola is a presence around the office and involved at every level of the team. He is a grinder, just as he was during his playing career. He pokes and prods in conversations with staffers, encouraging them to speak but also demands cogent responses. He has grand ambitions for Varese, hoping to turn it into a large-scale operation. Scola already bought back Varese’s youth program — sold off, Arcieri said, by previous owners for liquidity. He may also bring in outside investors to build up the club even further. It is all at the heart of Varese’s new direction. Scola has deviated from European norms because he has his sights set on bigger ideas. At Varese, power has shifted away from the coach and to the front office because as owner Scola can now think years ahead into the future. He does not just want a winning team, but also wants to create a success over the long term. That could take five or even 10 years, and coaches don’t last that long in Europe. “It’s a little bit different the way the teams are run in the NBA than the way teams are run in Europe,” Scola said. “And we feel a little bit more to an NBA type of team; maybe a lot more towards an NBA type of team. But the point when I say NBA, I obviously use quotes because there’s no jets here, there’s no Vince Carters, there’s no €200 million training facilities. “So we’re not the NBA — that’s very, very clear. But the principles, we feel closer to the NBA than Europe.”
This is pretty cool! RocketBall is international! https://basketnews.com/news-181956-...th-luis-scola-and-matt-brase-at-the-helm.html
