Davide Pessina speaks out on Sassari’s relegation and the difficulties of Cremona and Trieste

The former basketball player and current Sky commentator Davide Pessina in an exclusive interview with Sportal.it on the occasion of the event “Tennis and the summer of Sky Sport”, held Monday, May 4 at the Foro Italico in Rome, commented on the situation of Italian basketball and in particular of some realities in difficulty as that of Dinamo Sassari, just relegated.

“Sassari over the years has become a now almost historical square, an important square, a square that in any case involves a whole region an’ island like Sardinia,” he explained. “Losing it, hopefully for a short time, is definitely a blow, the problem however is of relegations, someone would have gone down anyway, maybe Treviso, however other historical squares. I would say a bad year, however, within Sassari’s especially recent history of a high level.”

The former basketball player also commented on the difficult times of two other historical clubs such as Cremona and Trieste: “I see that unfortunately this is also a bit of modern sport, where there are shifts of capital, shifts of sports titles. Then with the possible arrival of the NBA in Europe, there will probably be more slippage or adjustments to be made. Squares like Cremona and Trieste certainly should no longer have a top league team, and in any case a basketball of the highest level, it would be a shame, it would be serious both for the squares themselves, for the people, for the fans and for the movement in general.”

“Unfortunately, it is a situation of the sport more than of modern basketball, where in the end there are dynamics that go beyond the pure sporting fact, this is not a beautiful thing however I think that not to take note of it would be anachronistically wrong.”

On the A2: “It is a very lively league, with many small, medium, and large realities that with great competitiveness compete precisely for the few places to go up, but in general they give life to a very interesting league to follow, very entertaining with many Italian players and with a very good public following. So in my opinion it is something instead that should be kept in mind: the movement is alive even in leagues, if we want to call them minor but that is wrong, where however there is much, much effervescence.”