Dinamica Generale. Mantua’s PalaBam packed for basketball stars.

by Matteo Facchini

4,217 spectators at Mantua’s Palabam for the basketball star show. A quality show that satisfied the demanding basketball audience.

MANTOVA. four thousand two hundred and seventeen. So many were last night in the stands of PalaBam, filled and solicited by all kinds of events and attractions since the afternoon. If at the time of presenting the event the image of “Mantua as the capital of basketball” had been used, in retrospect it is not far-fetched to define the building on Via Melchiorre Gioia as a packed cathedral. Last night it was, no doubt about it.

Pallacanestro Mantovana gave the city an evening of basketball that really could not have been better. Let’s face it: where does one appreciate a higher level of basketball than this in Italy? Maybe at the Serie A All Star Game played in Ancona a few days ago. Hmm, some doubt. To open the show, unintentionally, a white-and-white back-and-forth: Gigi Jefferson on one side and Matteo Soragna’s triple on the other.

Great incipit. After 7′ Soragna takes a seat on the bench, with the applause of the audience coming down from the stands like a banner; for him a devastating impact on the start with 4/4 from three. Needless to say, the score is dilated: the first fraction is won by Coach Morea’s foreign “reds” 28-27. The Beretta-branded all-stars fly, literally, and coach Buscaglia lets only a few actions pass at the resumption of the game, then decides that, okay the show, but better not to lose ground. He will lose plenty of it: from 31-35, Coach Morea’s boys will get further and further away. The stage is theirs.

It’s back to the court and it’s time for Mike Nardi to go up, in his must-have number 12 and that blue tank top that tells the story of his origins. Two cheers overlap in the 16th minute: Matteo Soragna returns to the court and Ramon Clemente, Dinamica’s third star, makes his entrance into the game. The foreigners just don’t want to know how to concede a game, and they continue almost undisturbed their personal, monstrously high-flying show.

It’s basically like having four Jeffersons on the court, in different roles, all under the direction of Mike James. Ugly!!! The Azzurri also don’t miss spectacular dunks, with Raspino and Mancinelli. Hardly paying attention to the ticking clock, the Beratta-sponsored Red Furies don’t touch 100 points at the third-quarter buzzer.

Before the last 10′ begins, there is still room for a goosebump moment: the notes of We will rock you start and no one can refrain from clapping in time. But…the show must go on – just to quote Freddie Mercury -, and so on to grinding out points, running and flying. All with disarming naturalness. Beautiful final siparietto and ovation when Lele Rossi and Damian Hollis exchange tank tops and start playing against their teammates. It ends with an overseas score, 111-141; but everything last night in Mantua was American, in the spectacular sense of the word. Everything big, everything sparkling. Everything flawless.

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