Two offers for Grant Basile, but everything changes
Had Walter De Raffaele remained, Grant Basile would most likely have left Cantù Basketball: the Livorno native’s farewell, however, opens new scenarios, also because the wing born April 19, 2000 in Pewaukee, Wisconsin – on whom both Verona and Pesaro have their eyes on – still has one year left on his contract with the Brianza-based club.
After finishing his basketball education with Wright State University, he moved to Italy and signed a multi-year contract with Tortona. In his first professional season he was transferred on loan to Pistoia, with which he made his Serie A debut under coach Nicola Brienza. The following year he is, still on loan, in Orzinuovi, where he stars in an exhilarating 20.9-point, 9.7-rebound average season. He thus earns the call from Cantù. In Brianza he shows off another year well beyond double figures in the regular season. In the A2 playoffs he climbs even higher, scoring 18.1 points per game and earning the title of MVP of the Finals culminating in the Allievi-boys’ return to the A. Not brilliant his last year, but a brick on Cantù’s painful salvation he also put in.
The bond between Basile and Cantù had been sealed in the summer of 2025 with the contract renewal, which came on the wave of enthusiasm for the promotion to Serie A. “Acqua S.Bernardo Pallacanestro Cantù communicates that it has reached an agreement to extend the contract with Italian forward Grant Basile until the end of the 2026-27 sports season,” the club’s official note read. Words of great satisfaction had also come then from Nicola Brienza: “I am delighted that the path with Basile continues. We are going to confirm an important player from last season, who will also be fundamental in Serie A. We started an important technical-tactical work together and the possibility of being able to continue together makes us happy.”
The season in the top league also reserved for Basile moments as an absolute protagonist, not always for the most conventional reasons. On Dec. 28, 2025, in the Naples away game, a spectacular dunk by him had literally bent the iron of the basket, causing an almost hour-long suspension of the game. It was an episode that had made the rounds in Italy and testifies, beyond all else, to the player’s extraordinary athletic explosiveness. The game was then won by the Neapolitans 98-86, with Cantù announcing an appeal but then waiving it after appropriate regulatory investigations.
His growth did not go unnoticed even at the Italian national team level: in February 2026 Basile had been summoned by coach Gianmarco Pozzecco for the Italian national team’s qualifying games against Turkey and Hungary, appearing in the list of sixteen Azzurri available to the federal staff. An important recognition for a player who has chosen to fully embrace the Italian basketball project.
