The pressing question here is the one Messina, 60, prepared for: Will he ever be a head coach in the NBA? He mentions that he came close on several occasions, interviewing for jobs with Charlotte, Milwaukee and Toronto in 2018. He was long considered the presumptive heir to Popovich over five years in San Antonio before he says he “got to the point where I wanted to be a (head) coach again — to have a staff, to have a team and to do a lot of the things I learned from Pop.” He became Olimpia Milano’s coach and president of basketball operations this summer, returning to his native Italy to try to win his fifth Lega Basket Serie A title and compete in Europe’s top club competition, the EuroLeague.
Tag: Ettore Messina
“Maybe it will happen; maybe no,” …
“Maybe it will happen; maybe no,” Messina says over the phone during a recent Saturday afternoon train ride from Milan to Pesaro, a coastal city in northeastern Italy, for a domestic league game. “Maybe I will be an assistant again. I do enjoy my time here. It’s a good experience because you learn a lot about how the overall club and team function and how the club and team interact with each other. I try to do a poor man’s Pop.”