There is already a lot of history in this final that contains 44 league titles and almost 60 million in total budget, but Virtus and Olimpia promise to sprout even more. The Italian basketball derby, with the Italian flag up for grabs for the second year in a row and the fourth time ever (all in favor of Bologna), has the mission of producing sparkling special effects to dazzle even those who usually look elsewhere: 7 games, to do them all, in 12 days, 6 in 10 or 5 in 8, suggesting that this time there will be no coats for a 4-0 to wear for anyone, as happened in Milan twelve months ago. The caravan leaves tonight (9pm, live Rai Sport, Eurosport 2 and Discovery +) from Bologna: both carriages have helmsmen, horses, wheels and provisions to make the way. Only one, in the end, will arrive at its destination, filling one of the two most crowded boards in Italy: Virtus craves the brace and the passage from 16 to 17 scudetti, Olimpia dreams of revenge and the upgrade from 28 to 29. A diarchy, that of the powerful Segafredo and Armani, which in the last two years has shared every trophy on a national scale and which from September will re-propose itself in the EuroLeague, grabbed by Virtus with the conquest of the Eurocup.
A cornerstone, for someone in Juventus Bologna, to give the tricolor a different specific weight: for Segafredo, with Supercoppa and EuroCup in hand, it would be the icing; for Armani, however winning in the Italian Cup, it could represent the cake itself. Politically again aligned in the Lega maneuvers, the two companies, despite the pebbles of the ad virtussino Baraldi on the “concerns of the fans for refereeing” and on a “Milanocentric system, even if Olimpia is not involved”, agonistically forced to tear apart the two teams. «Balanced final. For us, being there, with the second budget of the championship, means having done our duty. Winning three trophies in a season, however, would mean becoming a legend », explains Sergio Scariolo from the virtussian side. «A balanced series, it will do good for Italian basketball. We know that if we do certain things we will have a better chance of winning », reflects Ettore Messina from the Olimpia side. From tonight, with the Ukrainian referee Boris Ryzhyk in the trio of whistles, we play.