IT'S MESSINA TIME IN TORONTO http://www.basketball.ca/en/hm/inside.php?id=2954 Georges Eddy, fiba.com Last Updated: April 06, 2009 PARIS [The Monday International Show] - After several years of predicting it, now seems the ideal time for Bryan Colangelo to make me look brillant by naming Ettore Messina the next head coach in Toronto. Over the years, one by one the protectionist barriers in the NBA have disappeared and with the naming of an italien coach, the last one would fall. Remember when NBA Gms told us that european or foreign players weren't athletic enough or strong enough on defence to play in the NBA! Gradually international influence has increased as players, scouts, assistant coaches and assistant general managers were recruited from around the world to the league which has helped provide a more diversified quality of play and created a better NBA balance between athletcism and fundamentals. The irony in the NBA of today is that the teams which succeed play an international style built around a good passing game, high pick and rolls, drive and kicks for 3 point shots, tough team defence, less isolations, power forwards who shoot threes, players putting the team first etc. Examples? San Antonio, D'Antoni's Suns, Detroit, Boston, or even the Bulls and Lakers with Phil Jackson's triangle offence, the ultimate in an NBA five- man moving and sharing the ball attack. Cleveland's improvement this season is due largely to Lebron forcing less one on five and accepting to keep the ball moving and let others play a bigger offensive role. Of course the origins of these collective basketball qualities come as much from Auerbach, Holzman, Wooden and Dean Smith as they do from Nicolic or other european sources. I think Toronto, whose firing of Sam Mitchell backfired, will take the next big step for several reasons. They have alot of former Euroleague players on their roster who would immediately buy into Messina's philosophy and don't forget that their star, Chris Bosh, played a big rôle in Bejing to win gold for team USA so he know's international ball and would , in my opinion, follow the program too! Toronto's biggest weakness is Messina's biggest strength, DEFENCE! In Moscow, he has succeeded in getting big stars to play intense belly-up defence and share the ball on offence which seems like just the recipe for putting Toronto back on the NBA map. One reason protectionist US NBA coaches (it's a very tight knit fraternity) say a european can't succeed is the inherent differences between the NBA and the Euroleague, notably the considerable number of NBA games played over a 5 month period would make it hard for Messina to apply his intense style to NBA stars who might tune him out. However, when you look at Popovich or Jackson resting their stars in the regular season and using the first 82 games as a preparation for the playoffs more than anything else, you could say that this fits fine with Messina's game plan! By winning four Euroleague crowns, Messina has proven that he knows how to bring a team along gradually so that the team is at its top performance level when the games count the most in the springtime and this corresponds well to the NBA playoff format too! Messina is at a stage in his career where the only challenges left are the NBA or leading a national team to a world or european title. With the russian clubs weakened by the world recession and national teams unable to pay multi-million dollar contracts to coaches, the NBA looks like a logical next step. In the end smart basketball is just smart basketball and truly great coaches should succeed anywhere. If Toronto doesn't go for Messina, other NBA clubs might and the italian is one of several european coaches who deserve NBA attention like Obradovic, Yannakis, Pianigiani, Blatt or Bauerman just to name a few. When you see a totally inexperienced coach like Vinny Del Negro get the Chicago job, you realize how hard it is for outsiders to break into the select club of the happy few, the NBA coaching fraternity, a great example of cronyism. Well OK, Del Negro did play in Italy! D'Antoni, who played and coached essentielly in Italy and his success in the NBA should be enough to push Colangelo and others to consider seriously hiring foreign coaches. --

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