Andrea Bargnani throws gasoline on the fire by responding to Gravina
Also Andrea Bargnani, former Italian basketball player with a long experience in the NBA, took a stand with a post on LinkedIn after the words of the president of the FIGC, Gabriele Gravina, on the elimination of the Azzurri from the world playoffs: “I was impressed and I can’t help but say that. On the sporting result of my colleagues I do not pronounce myself, sport is unpredictable and episodes decide matches, I know it well. I have also disappointed expectations in qualifying rounds with the national basketball team, and I know what it means to be inside a “meat grinder.”
“The apex figure of our national sport also justified the difficulties in soccer by saying that “soccer is a professional sport, the others are amateurish,” but the highest expression of this “professionalism” flaunted yesterday, Serie A, ended the 2025 financial year with a hole of more than half a billion euros (-531,241,500 euros to be exact) … so I would immediately be asked: when, how and where does all this professionalism manifest itself?”
“I have played in the NBA, the most professional sports league in the world, benchmark of any sport on the Globe,” stressed the Roman who was first overall pick in the 2006 draft.
“I have never felt more athletic, more professional, than someone who does high jumping for the Golden Flames training 8 hours a day. An unwritten rule of sports, one of the most basic, says that professionalism you don’t measure it by salary. You measure it by dedication, by sacrifice, by the fact that you don’t have a second job and you train your whole life to do what you are. So on this issue, making $10 million a season in the NBA or 2,000 in the Golden Flames with athletics does not change the level of professionalism. On the contrary, from direct experience, knowing all the colleagues in the various sports, those who do athletics or skiing in most cases train many more hours than an NBA star (but many many), and this is a fact.”
“At the regulatory and legislative level, there are clear distinctions between professionalism and amateurism, sure, but they are also daughters of strategies and/or policies…and that’s a whole other issue. Incidentally: our national volleyball team, reigning world champions for both men and women, would not be “professional” according to this logic. To call them amateurs requires a “courage” that I do not have. The problem is not last night’s result. The problem in some cases is who leads our sports, and with what depth/know-how,” concluded the former Toronto Raptors.
