Gigi Datome: Italy's Renaissance Man

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Italy enjoyed a decisive win against Poland (101-82) in their opener for this FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 qualifier window and it turned out to be a warm welcome back party for the Azzurri. They also won three days later against Hungary, in a hard fought 69 – 63 victory, effectively putting themselves ahead of the competition while Lithuania (already qualified) leads the Group J European standings. More than the end result, though, Italbasket was bolstered by the audience filling the PalaDozza stands, in Bologna: a town eager to see the beginning of a new basketball season and willing to prove their faith to a national team that appears more humble, but at the same time more confused, than in recent years. Italy's been invigorated by coach Meo Sacchetti's enthusiasm, but the team's still plagued by controversies: this time, is the absence of Marco Belinelli and Danilo Gallinari.

For two NBA stars that are missing out, Sacchetti was able to welcome back Luigi Datome along with Niccolò Melli, a teammate of his at Fenerbahce. Fresh off the disappointing end of 2017 Eurobasket, Datome claimed he would have some time off from FIBA competitions, but his resolve didn't last long: just the time needed to get back in shape after a grueling Turkish domestic season, culminating in the Euroleague Final Four.

Gigi Datome vs Poland FIBA

Datome has been faithful to the Azzurri jersey throughout his whole career, and he always heeds the call with high spirits – like that tweet in August, “L'Italia chiamò” (“Italy called”, echoing the last words of the national anthem) that brought a smile on coach Sacchetti's face.

 

 

Fans are well aware of this bond. That's why, during a particular moment of the Italy – Poland game, the audience in Bologna gathers around Datome: scoring his ninth point of the game (he ended up with 14) he has just reached over 1.500 points with the senior national team, a feat that puts him among Italian basketball legends.

The hero of that game would be Amedeo Della Valle (28 points and best sharpshooter of the qualifier with 24 three point field goals made overall), but Datome acts as the leader of this group: he would be the top scorer against Hungary, 18 points, with his team scrapping its way to the victory. In all this, Datome also found some spare time to star in one of his trademark anecdotes: he personally asked his fan Mattia for a picture (a guy who had just met his basketball heroes thanks to a social network campaign) like among the two of them, Mattia was the famous one.

Gigi Datome likes to play the role of the giver, emphasizing these notes of humbleness and empathy that make up his character. He also loves to fool around with his Messiah persona, a running gag launched by his fans when they noticed how his wild beard and hair were evolving from fledgling hipster to flat-out biblical. Andre Drummond, a former teammate in Detroit, tweeted “Jesus has come to save us” below a rare picture of Datome with his hair loose. And when someone asked him where he comes from, given his obscure background in the eyes of an American audience, he simply answered: “from high heaven”.

To skim through a player's career by simply jumping from one anecdote to another may seem like a bad approach to building a narrative, or something a writer relies on when he's at a loss for ideas. In Datome's case, though, those gags and fun stuff are the very fundamentals of his story. They're genuine statements of a personality who's open minded and whose thoughts about life and sports converse with one another.

 

In sports, is it better to develop an inquisitive mind, nourishing cultural interests, or to focus solely on one's practice, perfecting the mechanic of the athletic gesture with the precision of a machine? It's an ongoing, almost unsolvable dilemma, because every sport has its peculiarities, starting from the rift between individuality and team play. A few years ago, British tennis great Andy Murray fueled the debate, arguing that the best tennis players have to be “ignorant” (using the word by its broadest meaning), in order to equip the kind of tunnel vision that doesn't let distractions interfere with the performance. He was referring to those distractions born in the very mind of the athlete, which often sabotages a tennis player, filling him with doubts and questions through all the waiting time that punctuates a tennis match.


Gigi Datome sits at the opposite side of the spectrum, so to speak, but it's also worth considering how basketball's action unfolds frantically, and empathy with your teammates is more important than individual prowess compared to Tennis. Quoting longtime basketball analyst Sergio Tavcar, “basketball is a logical sport, for intelligent people”. While we could argue for months around the definition of “intelligence”, it's safe to say that in Datome's case, his multifaceted personality shines through the wide range of his interests and shows the depths of a curious mind. To notice this, all you need to do is glance at his social network pages to find sufficient evidence. Here and there, among thoughts on Italian politics and society, he shares clips of him playing acoustic guitar. Datome claims to be a beginner and thanks his teacher for his improvements, but one is not able to play J. S. Bach's Prelude or a riff from Eric Clapton without knowing his craft. His teammates have confirmed, Datome brings his guitar with him on training camps.

There's another habit Datome has acquired - living constantly on the move (take a note on the migration theme, we'll say something more on that). He always packs a book in his suitcase, or better yet, four of five of them. Every month he shares a list of novels that he recently read and appreciated, accompanied by a brief review. In April and May he wrote about James Joyce's Dubliners , Haruki Murakami's Underground and Reading Lolita in Teheran, and he never fails to mention the oriental nuances of Tiziano Terzani and Gregory David Roberts's Shantaram among his biggest influences.

He doesn't what to brag about being a rare, educated athlete, although we must notice that strong readers like him are trending down, according to the latest market research. Datome lists a good number of basketball players who share his passion for books: Andrea Pecile, Ekpe Udoh with the book club he holds with his followers, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and his fellow Italian at Fenerbahce, Niccolò Melli. Datome is looking to close the gap between sports and culture, and likes to fight the macho cliché of the athlete as on overly practical guy, always looking for physical confrontation. Outside the court one can be a musician, a dreamer, or travel across other worlds thanks to a beautiful story, all the while maintaining his aggressiveness come game time. Datome is a grit & grind player when the lights go on, and a charismatic leader too.

As the years have gone by, because open minded individuals tend to investigate their passions before they plateau into boredom and routine, Datome explored more complex branches of literature, always following a line of thought. Since he lives in Instanbul, for instance, he delved into the works of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, like The Museum of Innocence. His favourite read, though, is a fantasy adventure, the kind  of story we discover as kids and grow up alongside. Datome is a huge Harry Potter fan, and since his life is a collection of anecdotes, he once turned himself into his hero and met – virtually – author J. K. Rowling. How did that pan out? Once again, social network's viral power. Due to a coin tossed from the stands in an Instabul derby, Datome ends up with a lightning-shaped wound on his forehead, much like Harry's scar. The picture is tweeted and retweeted until it reaches the attention of J. K. Rowling, part amused and part preoccupied by the incident. Datome invites her to a Fenerbahce game: “the closest thing to Quidditch you'll ever find”.

Datome JK Rowling

As with many other sportsmen, Datome's life involves never-ending travel. Montebelluna, near Treviso was where he started, then some early years in Sardinia, a basketball career that took off between Siena, Scafati and Rome. America, the NBA dream, Detroit and Boston. And finally Turkey, with the goal of a Euroleague victory achieved in 2017. For some, all those cities would be mere dots on a map, but Datome inherited a nomadic spirit from his DNA; for him, every journey is a migration.

The verb translate, etymologically speaking, implies a movement which is both physical and mental: “to carry through”, meaning that every time we set foot in a new country, or speak in a different language, we become richer thanks to something previously unknown. That is, if we're willing to embrace innovations and differences. Gigi's aunt Daniela surely taught him to be so. She felt like a “white African”, as she defined herself in her autobiography Home. She was born in Asmara, Eritrea, third generation children of a family who moved from Italy to the Horn of Africa back when it was an Italian colony.

In the second postwar period Eritrea became a British protectorate and Daniela and her sisters, because of their passion for sports can also be sensed in the present. They played volleyball with the Walkirie, an almost unbeatable squad, suiting up for La Salle College in a gym hosted by an American military camp. From there, Daniela relocated to Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Gambia and Saudi Arabia before finally coming back to Italy in the 70's. Sardinia, she recalls, reminded her of the barren plains of her infancy. The sky was always blue over Asmara, roses bloomed all year long and they ate spicy zighinì. In that span of time, Eritrea had become part of Ethiopia and negus Hailé Selassié rose to power and then fell from grace.

By hearing all these stories about far away lands – his family still holds meetings between Montebelluna and “Il Gabbiano Azzurro” hotel (The Blue Seagull) in Golfo Aranci, Sardinia, where his father comes from. Gigi surely learned how valuable patience and being humble could be. The very same humbleness that has made him a well-rounded player, reliable, inclined to work for his teammates instead of striving for the spotlights. And the very same patience that helped him grow through every step of his career, learning something precious even from the darkest hours. Like Boscia Tanjevic noted, who was part of the coaching staff when Datome played in Rome, “Gigi began to get some serious playtime in a relatively late stage of his Serie A career, that's why he's now collecting at 30 years old the results he should have seen earlier”.

Today, Datome shows the confidence of a fully developed player, a key piece in a phenomenal Fenerbahce team, but three years ago he was ceaselessly traveling through the United States, between NBA and D-League contracts, never sure of the playtime he was going to get and training really hard to fill the athletic gap with American-born players. From a skillset standpoint, like Boston coach Brad Stevens noted, he was already “one of the better shooters he had ever seen”. Even though Datome was lacking on-court challenges, he was able to absorb every bright spot of his overseas days, always led by the bond he shared with his fans.

In 2015 the Detroit Pistons sent him to their D-League (now G-League) affiliate, Grand Rapids Drive. At that time, D-League games were broadcast live on YouTube and Italian fans invaded the chatroom during night hours to show their love to Datome. When he landed with the Boston Celtics, he just needed a dozen promising performances to gain a new wave of supporters, and this time they were all local ones. Celtics fans launched a campaign, with the hashtag #FreeGigi, looking to grant him more minutes on the floor and possibly bring him back for the following season's roster.

Datome never received that call, but in the meantime he had decided to move on:

“I don't know if it's the right thing to do, to go to the NBA just to sit on the bench, as many other do” he said. “So many players are torching every opposition in Europe, and then play very few minutes when they move to the United States. In some way it is a dream come true, and I'm happy for this achievement, but if you're good at basketball, in Europe you can really play to win”.

Datome & Melli FIBA Italy

A goal that's still missing from Datome's career is a joyful moment wearing the Azzurri jersey, a championship run to wash away the sour taste from his mouth. Datome is the first guy to beat his chest for the recent Italbasket shortcomings, always having to endure early exits despite boasting a talented group of players. He feels he still has a mission to accomplish for the national team that he has always been faithful to. That's why he's heavily focused on the FIBA Basketball World Cup in China in 2019, and has taken it on himself to cut off the turmoil between coach Sacchetti, Marco Belinelli and Danilo Gallinari. He’s invited the three of them to concentrate exclusively on what happens once the ball hits the hardwood floor.

Datome is a man of his word, when he promises something, he always delivers. Like that one time he lost a bet with a fan and took part in the King of the Pilo 2017, a playground tournament held in Bergamo every summer, gathering an audience of 1500 people and attracting athletes like rugby player Martin Castrogiovanni and basketball's Elisa Penna in charity events, selling more than five hundred jerseys over a day.

Euroleague has dedicated a documentary to Datome, for its series The Insider, titled “One of a Kind”. Gigi is indeed “a renaissance man in sneakers”, as they call him. He's open to any form of knowledge, and he’s a man for whom sports stands at the highest peak of a tightly-knitted cultural background. A polymath, a universal man: that's also how they defined Leonardo Da Vinci. But don't be mistaken, basketball is not a limitation for a man of this kind, not at all. Instead, it has helped him broaden his horizons. From Rome to America, passing through everywhere from the Bosphorus, the Middle East and Africa. To a migrant soul like Gigi Datome, Eritrea and Sardinia look very much the same.

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