Premise: Naples and Udine can boast a significant basketball tradition, perhaps not at the first level like Milan, Varese, Bologna, Cantù, Rome, Venice, but still with a few quarters of nobility. They attended several times and not episodically the top flight in the golden age of Italian basketball. This makes the ongoing challenge between the two teams already finalists in the Italian Cup doubly fascinating.
Let’s browse the album of memories then. At the end of March 1957 the runners-up of the four groups of the Serie B championship find themselves in a weekend in the neutral field of Reggio Emilia to play an Italian mini-group; up for grabs two other promotions to Serie A in addition to those already acquired by the four winners. In a world, still amateurish, and which cannot afford too many travel expenses, even if the economic miracle is now around the corner, it is the vintage version of today’s playoffs.
In the opening match APU and Partenope Napoli face off! It ends 44-42 for the Friulians, dragged (single in double figures) by Giorgio Graberi, yes, Paolo’s father, current CEO of the APU GSA. Low scores like in this series, not for the ferocity of the defenses and the physical and mental fatigue but for a much more staid game and certainly with less athletic and technical quality. In Udine, as in almost all of Italy, we still play outdoors, at the Piccolo Stadio in via dell’Ospedale Vecchio, wooden scoreboards, approximate spherical ball-shaped balls, concrete or clay courts, risky any acrobatics, defenses in a rather static area, almost unknown counterattack.
A much smaller and more elite audience of fans (played in high schools and universities), but the enthusiasm and passion had nothing to envy to that of our days. In the end, Roseto and APU will be promoted, but Naples will also have access to Serie A from the following year. At the time, Serie A was the second series (equivalent to today’s A2), the top series, today’s A1, was called the first series or elected. The transition to the top flight is then more rapid for Naples (it already takes place in 1961-62, with a few years of swing between the top flight and Serie A), while Udine touches it repeatedly starting from 1957-58, the season in which he inaugurates the new indoor facility in Via Marangoni, today Pala Benedetti, but only reaches it in 1967-68 after the consolidation of the sponsorship / collaboration with the company and the Snaidero family. The enthusiasm is overwhelming, the 1960 Rome Olympics and the economic miracle transform basketball into modern basketball which becomes, at least in some respects in Italy, and certainly in Udine and in the Region the main sport. In this parallel path, the last 60 years are truly mythical. In 67-68, as Udine said, he reached the Olympus of the first series.
But it is not an easy goal: you have to overcome the tenacious resistance of Vigevano, and it is useful to win a game lost after two extra time (86-84) at the home of the Lombards, whose victory is marred by serious intemperance of the public despite the broadcast in live TV (on the first channel !!).
The legendary years of Joe Allen, the Palazzetto in via Marangoni seething with cheering and the construction in record time of the new Palasport Carnera, at the time one of the first 3 or 4 Italian plants for elegance and functionality, certainly up to par of Rino Snaidero’s ambitions. Also in those years Naples, taking advantage of a twinning with Varese, witnessed by the Ignis Sud label, reaches the highest goals in its history: for three consecutive years it is in the top 4 of the top flight: second in 1967-68; third in 68-69; fourth in 69-70. In addition, in 1967-68 he won the Italian Cup and in 1969-70 the Cup Winners’ Cup prestigious European trophy, second only to the Champions Cup. We want to proudly underline the decisive contribution of Friulian basketball players to these goals, albeit of Neapolitan relevance.
In those years the coach of the Neapolitans was Tonino Zorzi, the legendary paron, and in the field Paolone Vittori, another high-caliber Gorizia, and the “Friulians” Giovanni Gavagnin (from Portogruaro) and Ottorino Flaborea (from Concordia Sagittaria) stand out. Formally the territory of origin is Veneto but we are basically in the Friulian cultural orbit of the Patriarchate of Aquileia. And who discovers, in the second half of the 50s, the talent of the two young Friulian-Venetian still beardless: Marino Orlando, a volcanic coach from Trieste, for a few months in the 1963-64 season he coached in Udine without too much luck. He remembers that, exasperated by Nicola Porcelli’s prolonged dribbles, he addressed him with a resounding “so you dribble, dribble to bale !! To conclude the historical overview, in the 70s the decline of the Partenope began, while it rose in tone, becoming, at least in terms of design robustness and in the popular imagination, the Snaidero APU.
The 7,000 Carnera fans at the time of Jim Mc Daniels (and in pre-earthquake times of tolerance for safety) they are an indelible testimony to us of that generation. It seems that basketball is moving towards a period of rediscovery of its great traditional roots (the Virtus Bologna-Basket City championship is proof of this); if this is the case, this quick historical overview can be a good omen, both for Naples and for Udine. In the frame of a journey with many points in common, today however there is no room for sentimentality: it will be a very hard battle and that the past will contribute to giving our Friulian heroes of today additional physical and mental energy more than ever necessary to keep alive the series!