Again in June, between Video games 2 and three of the NBA Finals, former All-Star DeMarcus Cousins made nationwide information when he was ejected from a sport within the Puerto Rico league after an altercation with followers. The scuffle, captured in cellphone movies that shortly went viral, landed Cousins a suspension for the rest of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional season.
However one other longtime NBA participant was standing just some toes away because the chaos unfolded: 16-year veteran and onetime No. 6 choose Danilo Gallinari.
And, whereas sitting at his kitchen desk in South Florida final week, Gallinari — with a sheepish grin — admitted one thing that few watching these movies would discover:
He began it.
“I hit him in his eye twice. We had been scrambling to get the [rebound], and he fell down and the referee did not name it,” Gallinari instructed ESPN of that matchup of his Vaqueros de Bayamon in opposition to Cousins’ Mets de Guaynabo on June 9.
“And, from there, he began to go loopy on the ref. Our followers are loopy. They began to go at him and he began to have this dialog with certainly one of our followers and I do not know if he slapped or punched certainly one of our followers — and so they began throwing every kind of stuff at him.
“So it was an enormous factor, however every little thing began as a result of I poked him twice within the eye.”
However all the eye on Cousins’ dramatic exit overshadowed the truth that Gallinari was enjoying in Puerto Rico within the first place. It was his closing season as an expert on a basketball courtroom, as, after becoming a member of the Italian nationwide group throughout this summer season’s EuroBasket match, the 37-year-old Gallinari formally introduced on Tuesday that he’s retiring from the game.
All of that begs a easy query: Why was Gallinari, who has earned greater than $200 million within the NBA and is a basketball icon in his native Italy, plying his commerce a few hours southeast of his now everlasting residence in Miami?
It was, as Gallinari stated, “Pure love for basketball.”
THE JOURNEY BEGAN with a Sunday morning pickup run.
After Gallinari completed what turned out to be his closing NBA season with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2024 — a six-game first-round loss to the Indiana Pacers — the free agent had visions of a seventeenth yr within the 2024-25 marketing campaign.
“I needed to play my final one even when I knew it was going to be a veteran function, the place you do not play as a lot and also you’re simply mentoring guys,” he stated.
However that plan required a group to name. Gallinari had relocated to South Florida full time along with his spouse, sports activities journalist Eleonora Boi, and on the time their two younger kids. So whereas he waited for curiosity from NBA groups, he stayed in basketball form by enjoying in Sunday runs on the College of Miami with former NBA guard Carlos Arroyo and present and former collegiate gamers.
Arroyo, a Puerto Rico basketball legend who was the flag-bearer within the 2004 Athens Olympics and led his nation to a surprising upset of the US in that match, broached the concept of Gallinari persevering with his profession exterior of the NBA.
“We maintained a dialog that went on for 2 to 3 months,” Arroyo instructed ESPN, including that the 2 Miami neighbors would often meet for espresso along with enjoying pickup video games.
“And it wasn’t till the fourth time that we sat down, I used to be simply listening to him telling me [what] stage he is in his profession and what he anticipated from basketball and what he was keen to commit.”
On the time, Gallinari nonetheless had designs on enjoying a closing time for the Italian nationwide group in EuroBasket this fall however knew his solely means of doing so was to be enjoying professionally someplace within the months earlier than the match started.
Enjoying in Europe wasn’t a sensible possibility, as he did not need to uproot his younger household. Arroyo, although, had not too long ago change into a part-owner of Vaqueros de Bayamon, the most important membership in Puerto Rico, which has received a league-leading 17 titles and performs within the 12,000-seat Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum simply exterior of San Juan.
“Firstly, I needed to play within the NBA,” Gallinari stated. “I nonetheless needed to complete like that. However then it is February and I am not enjoying.”
Gallinari took the 2½-hour flight from Miami and joined a league that, whereas maybe not on the forefront of the minds of American basketball followers, is one steeped in custom, together with legendary coach Phil Jackson spending a number of seasons there within the mid-Nineteen Eighties.
“He was in search of one thing extra secure, however near residence, someplace he can end enjoying and play at a excessive stage and simply play his sport and simply have enjoyable,” Arroyo stated. “And I believe it met all his necessities.”
The BSN has change into a preferred cease for former NBA gamers. Simply this previous season, Gallinari was teammates with longtime NBA middle JaVale McGee and former lottery choose Chris Duarte. Emmanuel Mudiay, the league’s regular-season MVP, was Gallinari’s rookie when the 2 had been teammates with the Denver Nuggets a decade in the past. Bryn Forbes, Hassan Whiteside, Ian Clark and Kenneth Faried had been among the many former NBA gamers scattered throughout BSN rosters.
“Puerto Rico was wonderful,” Gallinari stated. “It was good. It gave me the possibility, to begin with, to play at a really excessive stage, which I did not know was that top, enjoying 35 minutes a sport.
“It had been some time since I performed all these minutes, and I used to be an important participant of the group or one of the crucial vital gamers of the group. … These are the emotions {that a} participant desires to have each time, and people are the emotions that I needed to have and end with.”
And, from Arroyo’s perspective, the sensation was mutual. “The followers cherished him. He simply galvanized every little thing that we had,” Arroyo stated.
“We had a set date for him to get right here to coaching camp, and he needed to get right here not less than per week earlier as a result of he needed to indicate his group, his new teammates, that he was dedicated to successful a championship. In order that tells you numerous about him. He by no means underestimated the league or the gamers.”
Gallinari’s stint in Puerto Rico additionally achieved two feats that had escaped him in the remainder of his decades-long skilled profession: He hoisted the championship trophy after main Bayamon to the BSN championship, and he was named the Finals MVP.
“We had been extraordinarily, extraordinarily honored to have had him on the finish of his profession and the way in which he ended up enjoying for us,” Arroyo stated. “And there have been days that I needed to offer him a sport or two off as a result of at his age, on the tempo of the play in Puerto Rico and enjoying so many video games per week, and he by no means needed to take a time off ever.”
And the run to the title there allowed him one closing go-round with the Italian nationwide group, which fell in September to Luka Doncic and Slovenia within the spherical of 16 in what grew to become the ultimate aggressive sport of Gallinari’s profession. Nonetheless, he stated even with out the endgame of that EuroBasket look, he would’ve made the journey to Puerto Rico.
“I wanted basketball,” Gallinari stated. “From August [2024] to February, these months once I wasn’t enjoying, I wanted it. And so it was pure pleasure. … Till you expertise it, you do not actually know. And I could not have requested for a greater expertise.”
TWENTY MILES FROM the setting of what would change into his best skilled achievement, Gallinari’s closing basketball chapter practically took a disastrous flip.
On July 31, on certainly one of Gallinari’s few off days throughout his time in Puerto Rico — he joked that the group’s coach, Christian Dalmau, “did not like days off” — he, his then-six-months-pregnant spouse and their two younger kids went to Isla Verde Seaside in close by Carolina, to which they’d been given a resort membership by Arroyo and the group’s different homeowners.
“I used to be born near the seashore,” Boi, who grew up on the island of Sardinia, instructed ESPN. “I like the water. … They needed to remain contained in the pool, however I stated, ‘It is packed. Let’s go to the seashore.’ Then, every little thing occurred.”
Whereas the household was wading in shallow water, Boi was bitten on the leg by a shark, and he or she was rushed to a neighborhood hospital to be sure that she and the couple’s unborn baby can be all proper.
“We grew up watching ‘Baywatch.’ It is one thing that you just actually see within the motion pictures, and [it is] so far-off from you that you just suppose that you just had been by no means going to expertise it.” Gallinari stated. “Even the stats say that you’re not going to expertise it. … It was very surprising. It is nonetheless surprising now.”
And whereas each Gallinari and Boi stated they’re nonetheless working via the trauma of the incident, in the long run there have been no problems with the being pregnant, with their child being born just a few weeks in the past and everybody doing effectively.
Gallinari’s now-expanded household is a significant cause he selected to stroll away from the game that has dominated his life since earlier than he was even born.
“Can I [play another season]? Sure. However now I am 37. I’ve an enormous household, stunning household, three children, and I would like to have the ability to play with them at a excessive depth.
“I am very aggressive. My dad was very aggressive with me. … After I beat him the primary time, it was an enormous deal for us within the household. So I would like to have the ability to reside the identical issues that my dad was in a position to reside with me as a child with my children.”
His father, Vittorio, was roommates with Mike D’Antoni whereas the 2 had been teammates for Olimpia Milano. On the time, D’Antoni was arguably the most important star in Italy, the place he additionally started to make his title as a coach 30 years in the past earlier than coming to the NBA.
And it was within the NBA the place D’Antoni, after his outstanding run with Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns within the mid-2000s, was reunited with the Gallinaris when he grew to become the coach of the New York Knicks in Might 2008 — just a few weeks earlier than the franchise chosen Gallinari with the sixth total choose in that June’s draft.
“His dad was my first roommate once I received to Italy, and for six years, that complete group was inseparable,” D’Antoni stated. “We had so many good instances that we spent collectively.
“Simply by teaching him, it was a flood of these reminiscences, and his household, and attending to know him as a child.”
SIXTEEN YEARS IN the NBA took their toll on Gallinari’s physique. He did not make an All-Star group in his profession — 14 official seasons plus two misplaced to ACL tears a decade aside — and reached the convention finals solely as soon as, with the Atlanta Hawks in 2021.
However regardless of the a number of knee accidents, and lacking the overwhelming majority of his rookie yr with a separate again difficulty, he stated he is immensely pleased with turning into certainly one of fewer than 300 gamers to play not less than 14 seasons within the NBA, and to have achieved what he did within the sport.
“In fact there’s a wonderful line between … I believe it was a tremendous profession [but] with out accidents, we’re speaking legendary,” Gallinari stated.
Among the individuals who hung out with him throughout his many NBA stops — from the Knicks to the Nuggets to the LA Clippers, Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder and Hawks earlier than his profession completed with stints with the Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and Bucks — agreed.
“He may have been big-time,” stated Doc Rivers, who coached Gallinari with the Clippers and Bucks. “I do not suppose he ever had greater than a year-and-a-half stretch the place he was wholesome, and that derailed him. Particularly late, once we had him with the Clippers. …
“That is what I used to be so impressed with, that he had misplaced numerous his pace and he nonetheless was good sufficient to play basketball.”
“Rather a lot completely different,” D’Antoni stated, when requested what Gallinari’s profession would’ve regarded like with out the accidents. “He instantly had that again harm his rookie yr, and people are laborious to return again from.
“It isn’t straightforward to have the profession he is had with the fixed accidents that plagued him.”
None of these accidents, although, damage fairly as a lot because the torn ACL he suffered with the Nuggets throughout the 2012-13 season. That Denver group, the yr after he joined as a part of the package deal that introduced Carmelo Anthony to New York, received 57 video games underneath coach George Karl and was on tempo to be a prime seed when Gallinari injured his knee in April, inflicting him to overlook the remainder of that season and the whole lot of 2013-14.
“I really feel like we may have accomplished one thing if he does not get damage,” longtime NBA ahead Corey Brewer, now an assistant coach with the New Orleans Pelicans, stated of that Nuggets group. “That is top-of-the-line groups I ever performed on.”
Although Gallinari went on to have very productive stints with the Clippers, Thunder and Hawks for the following a number of years earlier than the second ACL tear worn out his greatest probability to win an NBA title with the 2022-23 Boston Celtics, these misplaced seasons in Denver stay a fleeting reminiscence of what may have been.
“I used to be the most effective participant on the group, the franchise is relying on me for that yr, and a few years forward,” Gallinari stated. “We’re top-of-the-line groups within the league. We’re third within the West, we’re projected to go far within the playoffs and with the possibility to win a championship.
“That is the sensation a participant desires not less than as soon as of their life: that you’re the most effective.”
Gallinari has accepted how his profession performed out and has no points shifting into the following part of his life, between completely different enterprise alternatives he is concerned with and spending time along with his household. That peace is essentially attributable to how issues led to Puerto Rico, the place he lastly skilled what he spent 16 years looking for within the NBA.
“When you find yourself a basketball participant, you need to really feel that,” Gallinari stated. “However you then begin to be a backup, and you then play much less and fewer and fewer and also you get away from these emotions.
“Puerto Rico gave me my emotions again.”