The years 1991-1999
The years of Caserta Champion of Italy with Enzino Esposito on a stretcher on the sidelines, of the European dynasty of Split but above all the years of a man born in Brooklyn in February 1963, raised in North Carolina and chosen in the NBA draft by the Chicago team . With Michael Jordan, basketball thanks the gods because nothing will be the same if the greatest athlete of all times has chosen a 28 meter long rectangle to perform. America is not enough, MJ becomes a global phenomenon and the 1992 Barcelona Games are the right catwalk: enough with the university students, the Dream Team arrives at the Olympics, and it is one performance after another ending with the most discounted gold ever. Magic and Bird finish playing basketball, they are what remains of the Eighties - as Raf sang - and let the Bulls dynasty begin.
New dynasties also in the Derthona house when Milvio Picchi come back to the Presidency ten years later and entrusted the sporting direction to an old friend: with Luigino Fassino it is a combination that smacks of old times, of Bar Italia, of Simmenthal and of course of Rapida. Caenazzo on the bench, twelve Tortonesi players on the pitch, with De Ros and Moncalvi called back to base to quickly leave the purgatory of Serie D and the result is a cavalcade of 27 victories out of 30. Back in Serie C, still the same, Tortonesità in power but the partnership between team and coach is broken, Barabino's heart is not enough, the class of Tava and De Ros is not enough and not even Andrea Moncalvi's feeling with the basket. They were relegated to Alba, with the dressing room in turmoil, in the last minute of the last day but the fourth from last place was good for the repechage and when the club baton passed to Adelio Ferrari the senators asked for the return of Mario Armana. With him, Bobo Creati and Paolino Mossi, a sixteen-year-old from San Salvatore with crystal-clear talent: it is the year in which Tava leaves an achilles tendon on the field, and we leave C1 again in the final epilogue of Omegna.
We are consoled by the women who return to basketball which counts as undefeated, hailing the talent of Camilla Muratori combined with the passion of Barabino, Orsi and Gazzaniga: the women's team is followed by Stefano Orsi, known to all as Bobo, and finds a wife but above all basketball finds him, another of those managers who leave their mark like Fossati, like Ablatico, like Angelo Franzosi and like Giampiero Palenzona. They are the ones who cover the role, but now Derthona rhymes with Luigino who is a river in flood, a volcano of ideas and passion: the love for this sport has kept him standing, the players are "...my boys ” and the boys play for him. Like Saturnino Colicchio, a wardrobe that arrived from Milan on a Harley Davidson in June 1995 plays in Collegno on one leg: it's the play-off to return to C1, half of Tortona invades the town known for the proverbial forgetful because it's playing against Alessandria and so it's a matter of principle. We lose nothing on the field while in the stands it is a sea of black and white on which to lay the foundations for the great return a year from now when today's captain, Marco Picchi, makes his debut and a caliph of the scoreboards named Paolo Arucci arrives.
It's a terrible championship, 18 teams and only one promotion, without playoffs: we're strong, it's true, but we have a lot of heart because we win an infinite number of them in the sprint, in the last seconds like the evening when Tava becomes a father for the first time and he scores the free throws for the victory over Verbania, generating a Wild West brawl. The evening of success in Aosta was June of 1996, we're back in C1, we can go to De Ros's wedding and think that it went well again.
Texts taken from the book “HEART OF A LION: fifty years of basketball in Tortona” by Roberto Gabatelli – 2008
