At the start of the season, Simone Fontecchio played well perhaps like never before in the NBA, the United States basketball championship. Fontecchio is 29 years old, he is the only Italian in the NBA and in the summer he moved from the Detroit Pistons to the Miami Heat. In his first 15 games with Miami, he averaged about 19 minutes (one game lasted 48 minutes, and he was not a starter) while averaging 11.4 points, on an excellent 47.6 percent 3-point shooting, and also totaling 2.7 rebounds and 1.2 assists.
These are great statistics, but they don’t just explain in part how Fontecchio is a critical resource for Miami and how he manages to have a major impact on both offense and defense in almost every game, when he comes off the bench. Two years ago, when he moved from the Utah Jazz to the Detroit Pistons for the season, he had a higher average, but he had never been considered an important player on a competitive team (Miami has won 9 games and lost 6 so far, and is aiming for a spot in the Eastern Conference playoffs).
This month, Fontecchio has also become an object of minor adoration among Miami Heat fans and enthusiasts. This not only has to do with what is shown on the pitch, but also with the stereotypical appeal of Italians in the United States and the voices of commentators who say things like Beautifulwith a very American pronunciation. Recently, after one of his three-pointers, the commentator (who probably didn’t know his Apulian dialect) called him out Three moneymaking a pun between Simone and Three (3).
Beautiful!
That doesn’t mean Fontecchio will do well on the Heat. Last season with Detroit was quite negative for him, and in the summer he played in the European Championship slightly below expectations with Italy (also because the national team’s expectations of him were quite high, considering that he is the strongest and most successful Italian player at the moment). There were rumors circulating that he could return to Europe, then a trade emerged that brought him to Miami. What seems to have changed, he himself said on several occasions, is the trust in him. This has something to do with Miami Heat coach Erick Spoelstra.
When Fontecchio arrived in Miami, Spoelstra said that two years ago, while preparing for a basketball World Cup game between the United States and Italy (then he was an assistant coach for the U.S. national team, which he now coaches himself), he had studied many of the games Fontecchio played. Since then he’s kept a close eye on him, considering him a player who could be useful to the Heat, and when the opportunity arose to get him from Detroit, he took it. Spoelstra has coached Miami since 2008 (he won the NBA in 2012 and 2013) and is a highly regarded coach because his teams almost always play organized, and the players often manage to express their best selves with him.
After the October 26 game that Miami won against the New York Knicks also thanks to the 14 points scored by Fontecchio, Spoelstra praised the Italian in front of the entire team, and allowed him to lead the team’s final shout, something generally reserved for the most experienced and influential players. As Marco D’Ottavi wrote above Last ManHowever, «the confidence that comes from Spoelstra is not just words: since the first game against the Orlando Magic we have seen plays designed to make Fontecchio shoot or receive it on the move».
Last year Detroit used him almost solely as a “pure shooter,” that is, a player who waited in the corner for the ball to reach him to shoot a 3-pointer. Fontecchio, however, is a more multidimensional player than that, as Spoelstra himself said: «He knows how to shoot, but not only that. He knows how to put the ball on the floor, pass block, open up the field for our main players. And most importantly, he fights, he’s tough.”
In an interview given a month ago to a specialized site HoopsHypeFontecchio said that in Detroit he wasn’t given much responsibility, especially from a defensive standpoint, and instead he didn’t want to be seen “as any European player who doesn’t defend and just shoots.”
Over the years, Miami has been a team known for its tough defense and the high level of commitment and competitiveness it demands from its players; this is an aspect that is often summarized in expressions Hot Culture. Fontecchio said he grew up with the myth of the Miami Heat winning the title in 2006 with Dwayne Wade and Shaquille O’Neal, and he felt very comfortable in that context. About twenty days ago, on a site dedicated to the Detroit Pistons, we read that Fontecchio made Detroit regret trading him by sending him to Miami. “This seems like a bad decision. After a bad season last season, Fontecchio is back in style and playing perhaps the best basketball of his NBA career.”
