FRANCO CASALINI_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

The first Final
Four winner
Franco
Casalini
Alright, alright. True connoisseurs
of European basketball will have
already spotted that this chapter’s
title is not entirely correct.
In 1966, Cesare Rubini won the
Final Four in Bologna with Milan and,
the following year, Pedro Ferrandiz did the same
with Real Madrid. However, those two tournaments
were experiments by FIBA and were soon discontinued,
so we could argue that the true history of the
Final Four started in 1988 in Ghent, Belgium. And
the winner that year was Milan, again, with Franco
Casalini at the helm. Coincidentally, it was also his
first year as a coach after spending 10 years as an
assistant, nine of them to his mentor, Dan Peterson.
Though that was the start of a great coaching
career, Casalini always mentioned the influence on
him of a few great coaches with whom he worked
and from whom he learned a lot.
His path was slow and taken step by step, but always
in the right direction. He coached young players
for 12 years, with his biggest success coming in
the Italian youth championship he won for Milan in
1978, with a generation of 1959-born players.
Even though Casalini already had a bit of American
influence at that stage thanks to Peterson, he
also learned a great deal from Dean Smith and Jim
McGregor, two great coaches who spent summers
in Milan. Casalini recalls that Smith taught him how
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Vladimir Stankovic
a team must play according to its physical qualities,
while from McGregor he learned how a team that
wants to run must play.
Casalini also never forgot Rubini, his first great
mentor, who taught him a rule he respected all his
career: before teaching tactics to a player, one must
know his character because psychology is more important
than tactics.
From a year with Sandro Gamba, another great
Italian coach, Casalini learned the importance of
individual work; for instance, focusing on pull-up
jumpers instead of layups. The years by Peterson’s
side showed him “everything else” as he normally
says, especially how to treat players and what it really
means to be a pro. As an assistant, he had to fill in for
Peterson 24 times and he won 23 of those games. He
was ready.
With so much good advice under his belt, it was
only a matter of time before Casalini did something
important as a head coach – and he didn’t need much
time at all.
His European debut took place in Bulgaria against
Balkan Botevgrad; Milan won 79-93 and at home did
the same, 97-88, to get into the league stage with
eight teams. After 14 rounds, Partizan was first with a
10-4 record, while Aris and Milan were tied for second
and third at 9-5, and Maccabi was fourth at 8-6. So
those were the teams that played the Final Four in
Ghent.
Maccabi defeated Partizan 87-72 in the semifinals,
and Milan overcame Aris by the same score behind a
great game from Bob McAdoo, with 39 points, while
Ricky Brown added 28. In the title game, Milan got the
best of Maccabi, 90-84, as McAdoo shined again, with
25 points and 12 rebounds.
The fall of that same year, Milan won the Intercontinental
Cup, which it played at home. In the final, Milan
defeated Barcelona 100-84 with McAdoo and Brown
combining for 49 points. Milan also played the first
McDonald’s Open in Milwaukee that year, against the
Bucks and the USSR national team.
Shortly after being crowned in Europe, Milan failed
to win the Italian League title, losing to Scavolini Pesaro
1-3, but the following season, the title returned to
Milan.
The next season, Casalini’s team finished fifth in
the Italian League regular season and was not the
favorite to win the title. However, Desio was its first
victim in the first round (2-1) of the playoffs, and then
Benetton Treviso followed in the quarterfinals (2-0).
In the semis, Milan avenged its loss to Scavolini with
another 2-0 sweep and after that, five great duels
marked the final series against Enichem Livorno. Milan
claimed the crown by winning the fifth and final
game in Livorno, 85-86.
Casalini then left Milan and went to coach Virtus
Rome from 1992 through 1994. In 1993, the team
reached the Korac Cup final, which was a two-legged
all-Italian affair between Rome and Casalini’s former
team, Milan. In the Italian capital, Milan won 90-95
thanks to amazing performances by Ricky Pittis (31
points) and Sasa Djordjevic (29). For Virtus, Dino Radja
was the best man (30 points, 11 rebounds). In the
second game, Milan won 106-91 behind an unstoppable
Djordjevic, who recorded 38 points, making 6
of 8 threes.
It took Casalini five more years to advance to another
European final. And he did so with Olimpia Milan
once again, having returned to that bench. But in
the Saporta Cup final, played in Belgrade on April 14,
1998, Zalgiris Kaunas managed to win the title 82-67
with Saulius Stombergas as the main figure with 35
points.
When I asked Casalini a few years ago about the
most important moments in his career, aside from
the EuroLeague and the Italian League titles, he
identified a few: his duels against FC Barcelona in the
Korac Cup semifinals of 1992-93; the participation of
Virtus Rome as the first Italian team in an NBA summer
league in 1993, with a win over Portland; and a
two-legged battle against Panathinaikos Athens in
the 1998 Saporta Cup, when Milan came back from
a 19-point deficit from Game 1 to win Game 2 by 27
points.
His basic ideas revolve around offensive basketball
and individual technique being more important
than athleticism. He doesn’t use these words, but he
prefers a 101-100 win to a 58-57 win. In 1987-88, his
Milan squad averaged 101 points per game, a record
that nobody has ever touched in Italy. Such an attractive
style of play was thanks to players like McAdoo
and Brown, but also thanks to Mike D’Antoni, a great
floor general, but also a good scorer (12.2 ppg.).
Casalini likes running fastbreaks and speedy
transitions. He’s not an “enemy” of defense, but
he says that he has “always worked more on the
player’s pride than on detailed defensive plans.”
He does, however, admit that those were “different
times, when opponents knew way less about each
other than today.”
From the start of his career, Casalini, who was
born in Milan on New Year’s Day in 1952, believed that
the best players had to play more and play better. He
wasn’t keen on rotations and sharing the minutes
with all players. His stars used to average 30 minutes
or more on the court, and they all posted impressive
numbers, like McAdoo and Brown in 1987-88 or
McAdoo and Antonello Riva (28.5 and 27.5 points
per game, respectively) in 1988-89. Those stars were
also given a great deal of freedom. Casalini‘s systems
were important, but he respected ideas and improvised
solutions by his players, as long as they worked.
After his successes in Italy, Casalini continued his
career in Switzerland, where he won two national cups
with Vaccalo. After that, he retired in 2000, which many
people thought was a little premature. He had coached
173 Italian League games and won 92 of them (53.2%).
After he left the sidelines, basketball gained a
great new TV commentator. His first experiences
came in 1994, when he collaborated with Tele+, but
his popularity skyrocketed in later years with Sky
Italia. He was a voice with authority, a wise man
who not only commented about what happened on
the court, but also about what happened before the
game started. It’s a coaching thing. And it’s great for
basketball.
Franco Casalini
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