“Get Inspired by Ettore Messina”: the Head Coach of Olimpia Milano welcomes Luiss freshmen

Yesterday, during Luiss Freshers Week, new students had the honor to hear from Ettore Messina, one of the top coaches in European basketball. The Head Coach of Olimpia Milano pushed students to give it their all, regaling them with anecdotes from his rich personal sporting experience.

For those who don’t know him, Messina is one of the most winning coaches in all of Europe. His palmarès counts 28 title trophies including 4 Italian championships, 6 Russian, 4 Eurolega and a Coppa delle Coppe – Winner’s Cup prize. He started his coaching career at the ripe age of 16, for the Basket Mestre youth squad. He went on to coach Virtus Bologna, Treviso, CSKA Mosca, Real Madrid, and Nazionale Italiana, ultimately finding himself at Olimpia Milano. In between, he had stints with the Los Angeles Lakers as a consultant, and with the San Antonio Spurs as Assistant Coach to Gregg Popovich.

Individual Accountability

One of the main points of his talk with incoming students during his virtual encounter was the idea around Individual Accountability – taking ownership of one’s actions or behavior. It’s a theme near and dear to the Coach, whereby, when an individual takes ownership, they can give their utmost for the benefit of the entire group.

For Messina, basketball is an ideal metaphor for group dynamics, because on the court, each person gets involved in both offense and defense. Every player must charge and defend for 24 seconds. Everyone is always completely involved in the game to make sure all the gears are running at top condition. To illustrate his point, Messina recounted an anecdote from when he had to substitute Popovich as Head Coach for the Spurs the first time out:

“When I was Lead Assistant for the Spurs, one of my responsibilities was to substitute the Head Coach should he be out. Right at the start of the season, Popovich fell ill and I had to take his place. On Game Day, we were ahead a few points and the team was playing well. But I realized that I had not managed player rotations correctly. In the NBA, the quarters last a bit longer and that means rotations are slightly different. I wasn’t used to the timing, and I had some players playing too long, others not long enough. So, at half time, I decided to confront the players to tell them of my oversight, and assure them that rotations would be greater in the second half. At that time, Tim Duncan was playing for the Spurs – a 5 time NBA Champion and an incredible player. As we left the locker room, he came up to me saying, ‘Coach, don’t worry. Keep doing what you’re doing. If there’s any problem with any of the players, I’ll take care of it.’

In short, he was reassuring me. Not only did he have to score, catch rebounds and play at the top of his game, Tim took care of his teammates, their moods and relationships. He proved ready to take responsibility in order to make sure it would all go well. That’s a grand model of Individual Accountability.

Jiminy Cricket’s Metaphor

Another topic that Messina brought up was that of motivating players. He used Pinocchio’s Jiminy Cricket as an example. Jiminy was constantly the voice of reason, always looking to lead the protagonist in the right direction. 

“Jiminy Cricket is constantly telling Pinocchio what he has to do, how he has to do it and why. But at a certain point, Pinocchio simply can’t take it anymore, and gets rid of him. The moral of the story is that each and every one of us doesn’t need our own cricket dispensing advice. We need to find within ourselves the motivation to push ourselves to the max. This is our goal both at work and at school: to become the Jiminy Cricket for ourselves. We all have a lot of work to do on ourselves to become more and more autonomous, independent.”

A word of thanks to Coach Messina for taking the time out to share his stories with our freshmen class, for his excellence and for giving us all some insights to get off to a great start both academically and in our sporting worlds.

Good luck this year to all of our Luiss students and athletes!