Gallo announces his retirement after 777 games in the NBA: a farewell that closes a career marked by talent, which was lacking
“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.” Danilo Gallinari says this to basketball in his farewell message, in which on social media he announced the end of a career that took him to the highest level. And basketball, Italian and European, but also NBA, says thanks to him. Because Danilo leaves at 37 years old as one of the strongest Italian players ever, with those 777 games spread over 16 years in the strongest league in the world there to prove it. He leaves as one of those Europeans who marked an era, who before Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic who today collect MVPs, confirmed that the talents of the Old Continent were not in the USA to act as extras, but to be protagonists. And Gallinari certainly was.
predestined
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Danilo soon stopped being just the son of Vittorio, who before him had brought the Gallinari name to basketball. When he declared for the NBA Draft he had already been the star of that Olimpia Milano where his father had grown up, the best young player in the Euroleague. And the idea that it was the New York Knicks who called him to the USA, coached at the time by Mike D’Antoni who, like Danilo, had worn the number 8 shirt for Milan, helped by his father to make it bigger, seemed like the perfect start to a new fairy tale. Danilo found America immediately, even if his rookie season was affected by a back problem. From New York to Denver was the transition that led him to become something more. And here, April 2013, there is the first regret: the cruciate of the left knee that jumps in a movement performed a million times. More than that, the year and a half it took to get back on his feet. The second regret is the injury with the national team before the 2022 European Championship, his European Championship in Milan. His left knee again, broken before starting the season with the Boston Celtics in which the idea was to chase the title. As a team man, as a veteran, but still as a protagonist. Not having won a medal with the national team in a major tournament remains his biggest regret. However, it does not erase what he did in basketball, what his 16 years in the NBA meant for Italy, for Europe and its growth.
symbol
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Gallinari didn’t win the NBA like Marco Belinelli, he wasn’t the first overall call in the Draft like Andrea Bargnani. Like them, however, he was a symbol. Of Italian excellence, of perseverance, of the ability to earn the respect of the greatest champions, of treading the field with them as equals, of having helped some of them grow. Two names above all: Nikola Jokic, who Gallo welcomed into the NBA in his last years in Denver, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, with whom he was a teammate for two seasons, first at the Clippers and then at Oklahoma City. It is no coincidence that all his teams paid him homage today: Gallo left his mark where he was, much more than what the statistics say, much more than what the pitch said. If there is an entire generation of new Italian talents, the ones that coach Luca Banchi helped win with Lithuania, who believes the NBA dream is possible despite starting from Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, as he did, the credit also goes to Danilo, for what he did in the NBA well beyond the 777 games, the 14.9 points average, or the Eastern Conference final played with Atlanta which remains his highest point in the playoffs. This is his greatest legacy. This is why, if he thanks basketball today that it stops, Italian basketball thanks him.
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