The 74-year-old former player who scored almost 2,000 points in the black and white jersey in the 1970s, bringing back a trophy, the Coppa Italia, after 18 years of fasting
BOLOGNA – Indian blood in her veins, shoulder-length silky hair and boundless talent. John Leslie Fultz knew how to make everyone fall in love with his rebellious spirit, a hippie loaned to basketball of which he was a living and formidable commercial. In college he fought with Julius Erving before Aza Nikolic convinced him to cross the ocean. First Varese, then the money and ideas of Porelli and Dan Peterson. Three years and a Coppa Italia at Virtus, Norda and Sinudyne, just enough to be dazzled. He scores almost two thousand points in three black and white years, wins that cup as a protagonist after 18 years of fasting for the club and sets Juventus Bologna on fire again, contributing not a little to laying new foundations for Basketcity. His duels with Baron Schull in the derby with Fortitudo are cloaked in legend, the beatings on the field, the esteem and mutual respect outside. Even on the bench, as a deputy and in the youth team, too free and quick-thinking to be able to make a career out of it. Kociss was unstoppable, on the parquet with his shot, in life with the excesses told in a documentary. Overflowing in the ups and downs, the use of substances that closed his NBA chances. But with that huge and generous heart with which Renato Albonico remembers him, more than a teammate in the epic in which wearing the same shirt meant becoming brothers forever. Fultz had been the victim of a motorcycle accident in June, he had survived but never actually recovered. Virtus greeted him with a hello Kociss, in Bologna he leaves his wife and two children, Robert who spent important years in Fortitudo and remembered him with a moving message on social media. “Fly high warrior of light”.
mourning Virtus Fultz
