Marcelo Nicola is the new head coach of Givova Scafati. The Argentine coach, naturalized Spanish, has signed a contract until the end of the 2024/2025 season. «I agreed to be part of this project which immediately attracted me, because the company wants to grow and be a protagonist. I accept the challenge with determination and great desire. Together we can do a great job and grow along the way. I thank the club’s owners for placing their trust in me, which I will reciprocate with hard work and the hope of achieving the results we all expect. The team will have to have personality and determination, fundamental characteristics to do great things”, said Nicola.
The General Manager’s comment Alessandro Giuliani: «We immediately got on well with Marcelo, agreeing on both the ideas and the projects. He will bring to Scafati his experience as a coach on the international field and his desire to fight, demonstrated in the 2021/2022 season (replacing coach Menetti) and in the 2022/2023 season, when he sat on the Treviso bench.”
The carreer – Marcelo Patricio Nicola Virginio (Rafaela, 12 May 1971), before being a basketball coach, was an internationally renowned basketball player: employed as a power forward, he played for the youth team in Argentina, and then moved to Tau Vitoria in 1989, where he played for seven seasons and with which he won a Copa del Rey and a European Cup. In 1993 he was drafted in the second round of the NBA Draft, with number 50, by the Houston Rockets, but he preferred to stay in Spain. In the 1996-97 season he then moved to Greece, to wear the green jersey of Panathīnaïkos, but he played very little due to injury. In 1997-98 he moved to Barcelona, while from 1998, for six seasons, he played for Benetton Treviso, where he won two league titles, three Italian Cups, two Italian Super Cups and one Saporta Cup. In the 2004-05 season he arrived in Ukraine to wear the shirt of Basketbol’nij klub Kiev, while in 2005 he returned to Italy in the ranks of Mens Sana Siena. In the 2006-07 season he had a fleeting appearance with the Pallacanestro Reggiana shirt, and then, in February 2007, he said goodbye to playing basketball.
Having ended his successful career as a player, he took the path of the bench, becoming assistant coach of Benetton Treviso for three seasons from 2007 to 2010, in the Italian Serie A. After two seasons as youth coaches for the Treviso club from 2012 to 2014, he moved to Spain on the bench of Murcia in Liga ACB, first as assistant and then as head coach. The achievement of an unexpected salvation in ACB projected Nicola into the following season in Lithuania, on the prestigious bench of Lietuvos Rytas. After completing his Baltic experience, in 2016/2017 he was assistant coach at Hapoel Jerusalem, where with coach Pianigiani he won the Israeli title. The following 2017/2018 season he was assistant coach in Germany at Brose Bamberg, while in 2019 he returned to Italy to end the season as head coach on the bench of Forlì (A2 series). Then, from 2019 to 2021 Marcelo Nicola returned to the Basque Country to sit on the bench of San Sebastian for two consecutive seasons, with whom he won the Copa Princesa de Asturias in 2020 (in LEB). On 5 April 2022 Nicola replaced Massimiliano Menetti as the new coach of Treviso (Serie A), achieving salvation both in the remainder of that championship and at the end of the following edition.
