Stood-up Claudio Sabatini writes Barack Obama re: Kobe, NBA lockout

October 13, 2011

Sabatini's next contract target?

Italy-based Gazzetto dello Sport reports on a couple of developments – or perhaps more appropriately “non-developments” – in the Kobe-to-Bologna soap opera. The first bit is easy to define: Kobe Bryant, it appears, won’t be playing for Virtus Bologna anytime soon.

As the basketball world awaited the well-publicized ultimate conference call between Virtus president Claudio Sabatini and Bryant’s representation, well … nothing much happened, and then happened some more. As it turns out, no call came to Sabatini’s office at all.

“I hope to hear [from them],” Sabatini stated in the Italian ‘paper. “I do not know how to interpret this episode.”

To tell the truth, BallinEurope isn’t too certain as to how to interpret Sabatini’s next move, which was to write U.S. president Barack Obama.

Sabatini and his staff reportedly believed that Obama’s public statement of yesterday regarding the NBA lockout was connected with the movement of NBA players to Europe.

“To avoid any misunderstanding,” Sabatini explained to La Gazzetta, “I have written to the White House that it is not my intention to cast a shadow on the NBA by stealing their most important player. It is just that I would like to give Bologna and all of Italian basketball the opportunity to enjoy the talent of this world-famous superstar.”

No reply from the president has been received by Sabatini.

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This post was published on October 13, 2011
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Comments: 4
  1. radallo
    11 years ago

    ORIGINAL TEXT (Source Virtus Bologna offical website)

    Dear Mr. President,
    We have a dream: to see Kobe Bryant playing for our Team Virtus Pallacanestro Bologna, the Italian town wellknown in the world as basket City.
    According to your wishes we hope that the NBA lockout will shortly stop but in the meanwhile let us have the chance to see at least for one game the great Kobe Bryant playing with our black and white jersey and be part of our history

    ReplyCancel
  2. 11 years ago

    Claudio’s letter to the president might be a more proactive move than anything the NBA owners are currently doing. As everyone knows, talks broke down the other night, resulting in a slew of unhappy posts from bloggers everywhere. http://tinyurl.com/62wn6nr
    Perhaps the announced appointment of a mediator, will help.

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  3. 11 years ago

    Sabatini does and says lots of crazy things on a daily basis, but this might be the top of them all!

    ReplyCancel
  4. Georgalis
    11 years ago

    http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop

    By Henry Abbott
    ESPN.com
    Archive

    Damage to the NBA brand

    A couple days ago on Twitter, David Thorpe asked: “How’s it gonna look when NBA players playing overseas get sent home because they are just not worth what they were being paid?”

    Since then, DeJuan Blair — a starter on one of the league’s best teams in San Antonio — was let go by his Russian team.

    It’s not that Blair didn’t play well. His numbers were solid. It’s also not that he has a big attitude — quite the opposite.

    The problem appears to have been simply that they could get similar production for less from any number of other players. He was good, but the amount they paid him, in that league, is reserved for greatness.

    Thorpe has long maintained that the very best NBA players are in a class by themselves. No other league in the world has players like Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. But after those top stars, whether that’s 30 or 40 players, he says it’s very hard to tell anyone apart. The non-star NBA players, he says, are interchangeable with professionals all over the globe, which he sees in his own gym every summer, where, for instance, Italian Serie A starters hang comfortably with NBA rotation players.

    ————————————————————————————————————–

    American coach Thorpe says right there that NBA players are overrated and are not as good as people think they are, and that European players are just as good as they are.

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