Garrison Mathews, fresh off a great performance with Napoli Basket, is the subject of \u201cUomini e Canestri,\u201d Luca Chiabotti\u2019s column in Repubblica-Milano. Here are three of his comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the End of His NBA Career and the Decision to Move to Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had a solid career in the NBA that eventually came to an end. But I still feel a strong desire to compete, to play, and to give my best. Europe isn\u2019t necessarily a Plan B, even though I\u2019d never thought about it before. Last year, when the Pacers waived me, it was Christmas: I went six months without playing, and that really weighed on me\u2014I\u2019m too young to retire. I switched agencies, received offers from Crvena Zvezda and Olimpia, and I\u2019m happy about this new challenge: it\u2019s a lot of fun to play here, because of the level of the teams, the fans, and the fact that every game counts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the pressure and challenges at Olimpia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a new experience for me, too. I come from environments where three losses wouldn\u2019t raise an eyebrow. Here, you feel the pressure and the drive to work hard to improve every day. There are a lot of new players at Armani, and we still need to find the right chemistry for everyone\u2014it\u2019s a process I feel very involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On life in Milan and the future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow do I spend my time? Learning new things\u2014in basketball, in business, in life. I don\u2019t do much besides training and hanging out with my teammates. I feel the language barrier, but I enjoy getting to know a new culture. I have no idea if this means I\u2019ll end my career in Europe. For now, I know I can shoot, and I\u2019ll give it my all here in Milan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Garrison Mathews, fresh off a great performance with Napoli Basket, is the subject of \u201cUomini e Canestri\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":551106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199,259],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-552284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-euroleague","category-serie-a"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/10\/CM3_4711.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552285,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552284\/revisions\/552285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552284"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=552284"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=552284"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=552284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}