by Giorgio Pomponi.

Dear Davide,

I apologize if I will write this contribution to your blog in an “unconventional” way, but I have at least two good reasons.

The first is that I haven’t the technical skills of the “Vate” Bianchini, or the field skills of Super Mario Boni, both friends who wrote so well about your adventure in NCAA.

The second is far better. Davide and I are the perfect synthesis of the incipit of a book printed in over 150 million copies and translated into over 300 languages and dialects: “all the great ones have been children, but not everyone remembers that”.
With the exception that we remember it.

Just think back to our first meeting, when you were just a year old (then for all you were Davidino) and you never had enough to play with me (our friend Luca has the filmed evidence), to the point that mom and dad did not work little to convince you to go to bed, and how much life, in its flow, has then led me to transform from an actor to a spectator of your “play”.

You were a gift to me, because if 18 years later I’m here to write something about you, it means that really, somehow, we got together, you and me.

I can not exactly tell you whether to choose to make such a radical change, leaving the place where you love (what you do) and you’re loved (for what you do, but not only), it was an Evolution or a Revolution.

Evolution and Revolution will always be a contrast between two concepts, both of which are valid in your case: because you choose to evolve to try to improve what you already knew to do at the highest levels here in Italy, and because you felt the need to make a revolution and going out of the box.

For this your courage, if I could give you a gift, I would give you the strength to never be afraid of your limits.

But you already know this, because you have chosen to improve yourself by measuring yourself with the best.

They will tell you, because life is this, what you will have to do to overcome the trials that you have set before the path, I will tell you one, that I feel true: whatever you do, the point is the passion!

A passion that goes well with the color of the Texas Tech shirt and with the name “Red Raiders”; I see you well in the shoes of the Italian Red Raider!

I close this letter with the description of my moment: while from the sofa at home I wrote this letter a ray of sun hit my eyes reflecting on the cover of a book, and since I believe in the signs I got up to see which book was…: “Like Kobe – The mamba explained to my children”.

Wow, what a sign. Then the wish is: be the Kobe of yourself!

A big hug, Davide.

Giorgio Pomponi
Journalist
Communication Manager “LBF – Italian Women’s Basketball League”