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The NBA season that has just ended with the victory of the San Antonio Spurs will be long remembered even by the Italians: for the first time in the history of the most important basketball league in the world, in fact, an Italian plays in the winning team, Marco Belinelli. The guard from San Giovanni in Persiceto, near Bologna, Emilia Romagna, has been playing in the NBA since 2007, when he arrived in the United States aged 21, and gets now a well-deserved reward after a wander lasted seven years between Golden State Warriors, Toronto Raptors, New Orleans Hornets, Chicago Bulls and finally this season San Antonio Spurs.
A season, the 2013-2014, which Belinelli also will remember for having won the three points race at the NBA All Star Weekend: a final consecration for the Italian basketball player, considered in Italy our better player (despite the intermittent results with the national team) but that in the U.S. had never been able to play with the continuity necessary to make him a champion everywhere recognized. Belinelli is not the only Italian to player in the NBA: after seven years at the Toronto Raptors, Andrea Bargnani plays now for the New York Knicks;DaniloGallinariplayed fo the Knicks from 2008 to 2011, and then went to the Denver Nuggets; Gigi Datome, landed in the US in 2013, playing for the Detroit Pistons.
Unfortunately we remember of it only once every four years, during the Olympics, but the Italian fencing team is the strongest in the world and it shows it whenever we have the chance. This june, at the European Championships in Strasbourg, the blue team was in fact the very first in the medal count, with 10 medals: 4 gold, 3 silver and 3 bronze.