2014, Game 6: Banco di Sardegna Sassari-EA7 Emporio Armani Milan 76-95
This was a less dramatic semi-final than the others, experienced as the favourite, but with enormous pressure on. Olimpia had won 19 consecutive games to close the regular season. Clearly before, but with the weight of the prediction and a bit of the obligation to win the scudetto after 18 years of starvation. The consequence was a difficult playoff and winning it was almost a relief, as Keith Langford would later explain. Olimpia passed the first round by beating Pistoia in the fifth match. Then came Sassari, one of the emerging forces of the championship, with the Diener brothers. Olimpia lost Game 2, then went on to win twice in a row in Sassari with a great Alessandro Gentile. But on the evening in which he was supposed to celebrate his arrival in the final, he surprisingly let himself be skewered by Dinamo, condemning himself to return to Sardinia with the nightmare of a new beauty. But that evening, Olimpia played the best match of the playoffs. He scored 24 points in the first quarter and led by 21 at the half. Langford scored 24 points. Gani Lawal went 8/9 from the field. It was the fourth final in five years and it would have been the one for the scudetto.
Source Olimpia Milan
