«I was scoring and thinking about her»- breaking latest news

With a calm voice and with the understandable shyness of her 18 years Elia Morandotti — son of Ricky, already a star of Italian basketball — summarizes the emotions of the special match he played last Monday with the Santarcangelo Angels, the Under 19 team of the championship of excellence: «I tried to play as usual and to do what they asked of me.” The search for tranquility to appease an inner storm that he certainly felt, but which he managed to tame in the name of basketball. He doesn’t seem dry and cynical. Elia simply disassembled the obstacles of a terrible moment with the usual normality: his mother Maura had passed away the day before, but he, a few hours later, wanted to be on the pitch at all costs, leaving the coach and his teammates stunned .

In such a situation it was reasonable to imagine that basketball was not the first of thoughts. Instead it was. What he then did in just 28 minutes on the court, against Perugia Basket, was mind-blowing: 55 points scored, shooting 10-of-13 three-pointers and 9-of-13 two-pointers. With two minutes left in the game, he was 10 for 10 in triples. “Surprised at myself? Well, I have to throw it in…” The Angels swept the board (128-59), but the party was for him: on social networks there is a photo of him among his teammates; Elijah’s face is not exultant, but his presence is emblematic. When asked if the memory of his mother prompted him, Morandotti junior was almost surprised. He hesitates a bit, he tries to shield himself («Well, I don’t know…») and returns to the idea that the match and the need to rise to the occasion were central. But he admits that in the depths of his soul something clicked: «Yes, a thought for her has left».

Telling the Morandotti saga is equivalent to following various plots. Dad Ricky, from whom his son inherited the genes of the value basketball player, was a former blue and player in Serie A for twenty years between Turin (the team that launched him), Verona and Virtus Bologna (with the black V-the longest militancy, from 1991 to 1996), without forgetting the parentheses with Varese and Roseto and, towards the end of his career, at the Gira, to Trapani and Guelph Basket. “I’ve seen some footage of his matches, he was really strong and had formidable physical means. For the moment, however, I play in a different role: he was a winger, I’m a point guard, more point guard than point guard» says Elia, born in 2005.

Maura was Ricky’s first wife who today, thanks to his current partner, is a cousin of Steven Adams, New Zealand center for the Memphis Grizzlies and weightlifter (Olympic and world medalist) Valerie Adams. Morandotti junior lives in Rimini with his father and plays in the Santarcangelo Angels. But he also trains in A2 with Rinascita Basket Rimini. Bread and basketball: this is the horizon of his life, there are no alternative options even if linguistic studies could one day open important doors for him. «But at the moment basketball is everything: I even play it on the pitches. Other hobbies? The music. But it goes without saying that I like it».

As a good millennial, he follows the NBA with passion (“I cheer for individual players, not for a team in particular: I say that Kevin Durant is number one, then I choose Stephen Curry and Luka Doncic”), however landing in Serie A is the project that cultivates. Dad was four times champion of Italy and with Virtus also champion of Europe (1997-98); always in Bologna he won an Italian Super Cup, while in Verona, in 1991, he won the Italian Cup. Ricky was a great shooter and an above-average athlete: Elia has yet to settle down both in physique (he is 1.83m tall) and in his role, but if it is true that the evolution of the species exists he will become even stronger. “I’m trying. With the idea, one day, of wearing the black V shirt myself».