Danilo Gallinari gave an extensive interview to HoopsHype in the United States, touching on several topics and delivering a number of statements that are bound to make headlines. Here is a selection.
On the “what-if” that defines his career
“No, I sometimes talk about it. I think about it just with friends and family when we sometimes talk about basketball and my career. We think about it, or when I come back to New York and I talk to my fans or people in New York that still work for the Knicks, we talk about it, but there is a lot of, unfortunately, because of my injuries, there is a lot of what-if in my career. I don’t know, I’m probably the biggest what-if guy in the history of the game, maybe. But it’s part of an NBA career. It happened to me, unfortunately, more than any other athlete probably, as far as injuries, but I don’t think about it too much.”
On injuries
“Well, I’m fortunate, of course. I was a great athlete before I got all these injuries, but I was very gifted skills-wise, and so my skills helped me hide a little bit of the wear and tear that my injuries gave to my body. And so there is basketball. There are so many things that you can do, especially offensively, to just make sure that you are an effective player without jumping and dunking like LeBron James. I was always that player in Denver, and so it was great to be able to just be free and play for all those years. Unfortunately, I have never experienced probably my prime because I don’t know what my prime could have been. I had back surgery my rookie year, and then I would say my prime was in Denver. When I was in my prime, I had the ACL, so after that, yes, you can come back and still be a very good athlete and player, but I don’t know if you can still experience what your prime could have been without injuries. But I definitely had a great time in Denver.”
More on injuries
“I think it is all related to injuries, so I always go back to not my back injury with the Knicks, but I always go back to my two ACLs. The two ACL injuries that happened to me happened in the only two times where I played for a championship-caliber team because it happened my third season in Denver and when I signed with the Celtics, which was my only second chance to get to the championship, so those are the only two moments that were not based on something that I did. I got injured, but I couldn’t control can’t control injuries that much. So it would be those two moments.”
On the opportunity with the Celtics
“Yeah, that was really probably the best, yeah, the perfect fit. It was the perfect fit for the way that the team was built, my role off the bench, the way that we lost against Miami that year. It was just the perfect situation. And unfortunately, it would have been great to just play one of the last seasons with the Celtics and win a championship. It was team-wise, and it was the perfect match.”
On the biggest mistake of his career
“And then one of the biggest regrets that I have in my career is the choice that I made to go to Milwaukee for one year instead of signing two years with the Clippers, which I don’t know if a lot of people know about. I had the chance to sign two years with the Clippers, and I signed one year with Milwaukee. So it’s probably, when I think about it, the biggest regret; that would probably be the biggest mistake that I made. Any other choice that I did in my career was, I think, great; that choice, contract-wise and team-wise, was probably the biggest mistake.”
On the Italian national team and Italian basketball
“That’s a great question, and it’s tough to have a clear answer. When I think about the clubs that I played for when I was a young kid, I would say that there were more investments in young programs. The investments now are less, and so when you have fewer investments is a chain where the coaches don’t spend enough time with the kids. They have a second job, and basketball is not the main focus anymore. My coaches were with us 24/7. Basketball was what we did other than school. That’s what we did all day. So it’s tougher to get talent out of the country every year. And then Italian players that are supposed to play minutes in the league, they’re not given the chance to play in the first league and go through mistakes and develop. That’s another huge problem.”
Source: HoopsHype
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