Ettore Messina spoke on A Better Basketball’s “Meet The Best Coaches” column. Among the questions asked to the coach of Olimpia Milano, who became the most successful in the history of our championship with the victory of the last Scudetto, also what would be the first thing he would do to improve basketball: “The first thing I would say is which cannot be done. That is, to widen the fields. Only nations that have systems of a certain type can afford it. Economic possibilities of a certain type. FIBA – and I understand this perfectly – will never be able to think of implementing it because between Asia, Africa, many countries where it is difficult to find facilities and you also want to expand the field. Maybe there are walls attached to the back rows, school gyms from 70 years ago. Thinking about expanding the fields, which would instead be a necessary thing, because the athleticism of these players, especially at the medium-high level, has dramatically changed. But it can’t be done.
The thing that could be done is to start considering the idea of 3 defensive seconds, to give more space to these players. You can’t widen the field for him, but you give him a little less opportunity to create these walls in front of him so that one crashes or forces a three-point shot all the time. The difference with the NBA is that due to the three-second defensive rule, in all the isolations that they also do they often also go to the rim. You see less of this staying dribbling for 10/15 seconds, then I don’t know where to go anymore because no one helps, there’s a wall in front, and I have to finish with a three-pointer. There, due to that rule, there is still the possibility of going inside the area. Previously we went inside with the passage to a long guy, now more with penetration. In my opinion, this creates a nice balance to see, especially at the NBA playoff level, in my opinion the highest level game.”
