The Special Man: profile of NOLA basketball and AD (great read)

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I hate these articles because they make me like Monty Williams.

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I am an Italian living in Spain who somehow fell heavily in love with all American sports as a young kid. I also have a disdain for the big winners and I always cherish the underdog. I visited New Orleans once, in 2010, escaping the tours to Katrina-hit bayous and neighbourhoods that they’d set up for European visitors. I had pancakes, I had po’ boys, I got tired of Bourbon St. and spent a real lot of time talking with New Orleanians about the Saints, who’d just won their SB45. It was right after the Mardi Gras and I rejoiced in the leftovers, that sort of endless sunset that embraces the city that next Wednesday. I loved the city as an underdog, the city when no one thinks to visit, when almost everyone’s left. I managed to see a Hornets game (though Paul was just co-coaching from the sideline, as he was still struggling with injury), bought my statutory Stojakovic jersey and left (with a huge hangover) the city. Perhaps I’ll never see it again, and I’ll be left with the whole Treme collection in HD as the only postcards of whatever memory I can gather of the food, the smells, the wind, the Mississippi, the people, the tiny lights hanging everywhere, the beads, the music, and the sound of the beer bottles touching the bar. All this, all those fast 6 days are why I’m so in love with the city of New Orleans. And why I’m intoxicated with an enthusiasm that could be hardly explained from the outside. That’s why as a man who truly enjoys sports I believe I am lucky having been born in the era of Anthony Davis (a privilege I compare to that of being a contemporary of Roger Federer, having seen Leo Messi live, and a few other once-in-a-lifetime gems), and why I am not only hopeful, not just certain, but sincerely grateful that this is going to happen in Crescent City.

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