“One of those days when it’s better not to get out of bed” | Relief

To train in the NBA without being from the United States is quite a feat in the world of basketball. So far, only five have achieved this: Steve Nash, Jay Triano, Igor Kokoskov, Darko Rajakovic and Jordi Fernandez. Sergio Scariolo was supposed to be the sixth, although he hit the post several times: starting in 2019, he was an assistant coach of the Toronto Raptors, and in 2021, the Covid-19 plague throughout the team’s technical organization made him feel like he was on the starting bench during a regular game season. However, Scariolo was one step away from becoming the conductor of the Raptors themselves. It was in 2023 that the team management opened the process of appointing a new coach. The Italian coach spoke about the casting process and how Scariolo himself was one step away from leaving the national team to pack his bags and cross the pond at El Vestuario with Quique Peinado, in a conversation that demonstrates how much of a difference a breath of wind makes the destiny of your life.

You can see Quique Peinado’s full interview with Sergio Scariolo in El Vestuario here.

Hey, Jordi Fernandez worked with you, Chus Mateo worked with you, Ivo Navarro worked with you, Txus Vidorreta worked with you, a lot of top-level coaches worked with you. Does it make you feel better or older? How do you feel?

Well, to be honest, I don’t feel old at all. It’s true that then you think about the numbers, you think about what you can save, and you say, “Damn, I don’t know,” but then at the level of energy, at the level of lifestyle, way of seeing. things, everything, this word does not correspond to my perception of myself, but I feel good because these are all people with whom you maintain relationships, you have developed connections that do not break, and you have pride. Truly an example of Jordi, when they beat us and Canada at the World Cup, I felt sad the moment I congratulated him on his victory, but immediately after, seeing him celebrate gaining an already important international dimension, I felt pleasure and pride. and said: “Well hey, if it has to happen to someone, it better happen to someone that I consider mine, It was very much one of mine, and in fact now there are many of them, because between the Italian league, the NBA, the ACB… in the United States they talk about wood, and I don’t seem to dare me an expression that can be talked about Popovich, but it’s a little the concept of branches which then produce much more beautiful fruits and flowers from the trunk itself. I’m a little afraid to use this expression, but when I think that in the last two years I have had a first assistant at Virtus (in Bologna), that he is certainly the first, that they are about to rise… see success who has been with me gives me joy, it even gives me energy and motivation because you say, “Well, maybe one little thing helped them become so good.”

Now that we see that Jordi Fernandez Bueno has become an NBA head coach, do you still have time to achieve this or not?

I never thought this was possible. True, in the period from mid-April to mid-June last year, a situation occurred when the Raptors management They came to Bologna for their first official interview as a candidate for the role of head coach. I was told that we were finalists in the final round of interviews, for which I was unable to travel to Toronto because it was the week of the League finals. We conducted the interview online, it lasted the whole day, from 3 pm to 8:15 with different things, also very interesting, in which I obviously tried to present my view of things, but it is never the same as with direct personal contact. Then the next week came a time when I knew it was between me and Darko. (Rajakovic), who was eventually chosen. The reality is that they called me earlier and said, “Hey, looks like it’s you.”

Did they tell you this?

Yeah, the journalist told me, “Hey, it looks like they’re about to pick one, announce it, and it could be you.” I watched, I remember the Champions League match, the Champions League final of Inter Milan against Manchester City, with my team, with the team there, we rented a hotel room because we were between first and first. Second game of the League final. We lost the first one, the next day we played the second one. And well, I was there watching it, obviously with the stress of your team playing in the Champions League final and you get these messages and you say, “Well, what a moment.”. And then they call me again and say: “Bobby Western called me and said it was a tough decision, so-and-so, but they settled on Darko.” And well, we didn’t and don’t have that, and they didn’t take away what I had.

But it’s impossible that you don’t have a lot of hope that this will happen.

Of course not. Let’s see, I’ve been in the NBA for three years now, I know exactly what the NBA is.. In other words, I’m not like a kid who goes into a toy store without knowing what he’ll find. For better and for worse. Obviously experience as an NBA coach was irrefutable, for many reasons. Between them also economic, let’s not be the little brothers of charity. So I haven’t lived like this since I was a kid, I dreamed about it, I lived it with a professional opportunity that I obviously would have liked to pursue if it presented itself, and since it didn’t present itself, I developed the ability to forget. Obviously, there’s a moment of frustration where you say, “Bloody hell, this is a shame, isn’t it?” But then I really developed the ability to say, “Let’s now look at the glass half full of what it means to not have it.

But then Inter won, of course, and that’s it.

Then he hit, it was a strong blow.

Yes, what a day

In the same way, after everything was in hand, the missed goals that…

What a day, Sergio, there are days that don’t happen.

Exactly, I went to bed saying: “Well, look, this is one of those days when it’s really better not to get out of bed” (smiles sarcastically).

Sure, but you were the first NBA coach, by the way, but you were.

About 10 days.

And that team gave you that ball, and after the game they gave you a lot of love, those images of the locker room that seemed to definitely encourage you to be a head coach and make it.

Yes, yes, it was nice, really, because it’s true I felt a great respect, a greater ability to understand that my role now had to be different for a while. and it was great, really. Unfortunately, due to Nick Nurse’s COVID, nothing happened to him either. And yes, it was nice that only teams that came back to look for meobviously Milwaukee and Philadelphia for the lead assistant or assistant coach, whatever you want to call it, second as they would say here, and Toronto for the first coach.they were just teams I was on. – Toronto – or trained with the first coaches with whom I lived for three years. Many times The criteria for teams making decisions about choosing a coach are, to put it mildly, curious. When you’ve met someone, you know what they’re about, what they can give you, so when the team or coach you lived with comes back to look for you and thinks you can help them effectively, that’s it satisfaction. This is what will stay with you. Those who know basketball, some of those who have been with you and seen what you can do, in the NBA, a very competitive and highly competitive world, have told you again: hey, I’d like to come back… or In the case of Toronto, we see you as one of the few people who could do the job.