Our story, our actions, our vision spanning 40 years - we wanted to tell it to honor our 40th Anniversary 1980-2020. That traditional little volume, which we also published online to share and celebrate our journey, contains a compelling story about who we are and what we do. It would probably start by saying, 'We are a sports academy of top professionals operating for years between the States and ...' or 'Our basketball is different both in its approach and …' Then maybe some photos with famous NBA players, links to key videos on YouTube, pictures of our facilities around the world, a brief historical description of each of us paired with impactful phrases like 'we are dynamic, passionate athletes…' … some trophies in display cases to please the aesthetes, a series of photos of athletes and teams with at least four or five coaches and trainers alongside them, highlighting if any player has reached a significant league with texts praising them and ourselves. Let’s not forget photos of the audience, playfully emphasizing that they too are part of the community and underlining their 'importance.' But we are not conventional, and for this reason, we tell our story in a language that belongs to us, hoping it will resonate even with those who take the time to get to know us deeply. Because it won’t be through just another presentation like many others that you will understand how we work, what we are capable of, and above all, how far we can go in shaping athletes.. [Written by Claudio Ciceri, Kevin Patterson, Adrien Roger] Reprint in 2023.

UNREAL COURT 

Preface

But this is only the beginning of the story. Prepare to discover the unexpected.

 “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see” [Edgar Degas] We wish to sharpen the reader’s gaze and encourage slowing down the usual rapid pace of reading images on the court with a more expansive and thoughtful approach.

An introspective, space-time journey through writing, characterized by Beauty - unmasked - yet equipped with a sharp vocabulary through which striking and illuminating topics are presented. Sometimes, great eloquence is replaced by silence understood as emotional solitude, an analytical ability to see flaws, rational introspection on both technical and human issues, a denial of love to avoid being influenced. Graphic elements serve as subtle points of reflection [if it were a printed book], and the use of black conveys to the reader the profound sensations experienced. Among the many reflections glimpsed between the lines emerges - the true meaning of Beauty - a concept that will find its answers between the said and the unsaid in the various chapters and final thoughts.

A careful reading of the layout’s story reveals details, graphic plays, drops that transform into a wave recurring between chapters as an interlude, signifying a uniform philosophy, evoking with suggestion our passion and its inherent strength in everything we offer, consistent with the values that belong to our DNA. For the title’s graphic, we imagined a sprinkle of golden dust to evoke, between density and lightness, something difficult to illustrate, something as important as intangible to the hand yet tangible to the eye - an extraordinary experience that might seem to dissipate to those not attentive to details. A color: black, a black that is not absolute as the background of the graphic used to highlight its chosen importance.

An extraordinary writing, as is the title we chose to describe ourselves - Unreal Court. Unreal, surreal - these translate Unreal and we believe they are words that well represent what the eye captures in its solitude of thought when judging from afar. But as one approaches closer, the boundaries become clearer, the optical and mimetic perception of reality ceases to be a matter of mere reference. Instead, the burden of interpreting visual grammar passes to a mental construct that governs phenomenal formation … facts are read with the certainty of words and … simply, one falls in love with this strange, unique, extraordinary World.

 Begin Chapter 1

A white noise that sounds like silence, a nothingness before the beginning, to once again marvel at the beauty of the Soul that almost invisibly renews itself every day and every day tells new Stories.

The basketball court - a place not for everyone. Few interpret its signs, read them, and above all, follow them. It is never truly explained in its essence, in its definition. BTA - Basketball Training Academy not only seeks to make it understandable but strives to teach how to express it.

A journey into my universe, where recurring images of pettiness appear, contaminating the spirit that, in its solitude, if not total absence, celebrates its wrath. Immediately present are selfishness and frustration: selfishness in thinking only of oneself without realizing the context where the self is a drop - a drop in an ocean that seems nonexistent, though infinite in its being - and frustration, resignation, and helplessness in the face of everyday talk - sorry, the hypocrisy of everyday talk that reveals its true intent in front of the weak. Perhaps rather than “intent,” it would be more appropriate to call it weakness - the weakness of those who, not being, engage in dialogue only with their own mediocrity and to their mediocrity. I journey and simplify with bare words and scenes from what I’ve seen, a tedious, severe concept if you wanted to place it as a boulder on the path of knowledge. Every time we do not take a stand, whatever the reason and its outcome, we define our lack in the search for beauty - our soul’s poverty - moving away from the path of knowledge. We tend to conceive the self as above all and everyone else. In school, society, and sport today, shocking anomalies reveal themselves: little men of very low socio-cultural level, utterly shallow, who sell out everyone and everything to boost their ego, despite their lack of knowledge and depth. Unfortunately, acceptance validates the habit, it confirms the validity of such behavior, even if daily talk distances itself from it. What hypocrisy, what absence of a soul’s path and consequently of knowledge in its broadest sense. I pause for a moment on the meaning of knowledge … “awareness and understanding of a fact” … I read in the dictionary of meanings but would like to add a grain of nuance to this definition. I use the word grain deliberately and hope its justification is understood. I place knowledge as a value of growth, growth of the self and a path due to its pursuit if sought. Sought - a strange organized sound, no longer perceived with emphasis, nor even the image of the notion, vanished in its meaning if it pertained to the soul itself, valid all the more if related to the greed for possession, where possession defines anything linked to power in its broadest sense. Hence the improper use of the word grain - improper perhaps in spoken language, but appropriate in its externalization of thought and value dispensed nowadays by the multitude, church included, crouched in its exaggerated traditionalism yet lacking absolute truth lost over time, which seems to have deteriorated its importance given by its own Creator. An inertia and uselessness of its representatives, at least the majority, who spend their existence seeking fiction and numbers, whether festive or economic.

Anyone who restrains “awareness and understanding,” whatever the field - academic, sports, and so forth - commits violence against a soul, blocking its path especially in young people, hindering the evolution of their personality, a prejudice that will sadly remain fixed in the soul’s memory, increasingly annihilating its meaning. Knowledge must start from within, from my soul - and this can only happen if I respect it, and demand respect for it, appreciating the subjective qualities that form the depth and complexity of my being, that immense genetic heritage the Creator gave me, marking as ultimate purpose the thought of using it for my evolution as a man and to follow the path He envisioned and planned for me. Now, withdrawing from reality the absolute character of my writing, having contested the possibility of free evolution toward my destiny inscribed in the genetic sequence, I outline a specific component … synesthesia - “perceiving together” [every perceptual activity is nothing but a combination of stimuli that excite multiple sensory channels]. I would like to give a deeper structure to the way knowledge is conceived by raising it to a perceptual level of interaction and uncontrolled overlap of multiple senses, an involuntary and concrete sensory experience, almost a reflex of the soul, a critique at the margins of what our senses are or what we are accustomed to defining as such. To understand what I am about to propose, I want to fix this partial reflection in the reader, perhaps temporary but useful to decipher a thought. Often we notice qualities or gifts in some people that make them different; think of artists in a broad sense, where a simple combination of sensory spheres leads to an enhancement of their perceptive abilities and those related, in this case, to creativity. These gifts can be trained, modulated, refined, contaminated. Contaminated by our will to perceive, even necessary - a concept desirable if a relaunch of the lost spirit were desired in human, necessarily ethical-practical-social, and necessarily historical terms, that lost spirit that closed the doors to the spiritual future as a path dictated by man’s evolutionary purpose, to reopen a clear sky today, a gap that allows us to live, or start living again, in its deepest meaning. Let’s slip into uncontrollable and metaphysical terrain where our senses, as we understand and know them, expand infinitely, where sense and objective critique become non-absolute points allowing us to deny the worries of the manifest daily life, those ephemeral and abstract worries of our self that so involve us in the material dimension but equally distance us from the spiritual, which I write as a translation of attention to my neighbor.

I do not want to give solutions to a “concreteness” of thought, simply to define an undetermined intuition that, precisely because it is abstract, allows entry into a different dimension, perhaps unknown or perhaps known only as imposed doctrine - imposed because today spirituality in its broadest meaning, encompassing values that are, no, should be, as they once were, inherent also in Sport, is imposed by catechesis from the first days of our breath but also liberalized by absent deeds of those who on the altar of principle translate words that serve no purpose, distancing with their actions Knowledge, a Knowledge today amorphous, distant, almost inaccessible, undetermined, too remote from the initial conception pronounced by its Genesis. But I want to slide on that terrain and confront that transcendental Nothingness of supreme coldness, incapable of entering daily life, trying to regenerate that sphere of human feelings, those happy glimpses of the Soul that remains the unique interpreter and strength of our spirituality-attention. I prepare myself, dress myself - if dressing were a term that belongs to me - I put on my armor, leaving masks to others, and begin to walk among the common zombies sensing the acrid smell of the essential, or at least what they believe to be so, and let myself go down the slope, expanding my senses. I slip and find myself in an unreal world where common concepts appear invisible from where I started to fall. I see roads, buildings, mountains, and seas, and I see the unexpected - a basketball court, an unreal court if transposed where a little while ago I began writing, a court free from preconceptions, free from frustrated egos, free, free… it belongs to me and I would like to define it for you. Every boy who is denied the opportunity to explore the world in the broadest sense - including clearly exploration of himself - is a soul we risk losing very quickly and we do not consider this a desirable choice. Our future is him tomorrow. Every adult who considers these contents trivial, who thinks real life must be confined to his own ego, his own power, his own will, without questioning his actions, is certainly a lost soul. We believe every boy is a gift to be preserved and nurtured without impositions, except values, without any limits that deprive his personality. If from an early age we had been taught to undertake serious and important paths in various forms of ability - where ability takes shape and meaning by fitting into the segment we want to give depth to, specifically sport, where sport also takes on the meaning of life - if we had been helped to follow and nurture that ability where our vocation and passion, gift and personality were best expressed, how much more evolved, how many more champions would we be? It seems incredible yet it is proven truth, tested, seen and understood. It seems incredible, yet we are talking about us, all of us, boys of today and boys of yesterday. How much potential we have inside makes it imperative to ask ourselves about the future. Along our path, we have perceived in signs of school apathy, social boredom, various adolescent conflicts the problem: a problem linked to the lack of true mental freedom, freedom of soul, freedom to be, freedom to try and understand, freedom to grasp oneself, surely with its flaws still needing balance, to look forward instead of back, to look and dream without the presence of frustration from an ego that deprives dynamism. If this is still not understood, perhaps two questions about where we are headed become imperative to ask; perhaps a positive reflection and a new method to approach other people's lives should be sought elsewhere - and we would say very soon, the ticking of time does not stop.

Through the basketball court, we explore opportunities, methods, and concepts that can be useful for those seeking to unlock the potential of their person - both physically and mentally. Feeling the need for freedom in body and mind becomes the starting point. Freedom today is dormant in a corner of one’s inner self; you only hear its murmur because freedom is something you can truly feel and appreciate. Through the basketball court, we aim to restore that essential sense of self-realization necessary for growth - the realization of your being that will allow it to become a lifestyle, not simply a physical state as it is socially perceived today, but a mental and existential condition, without which you will feel deprived of your dreams. Today, the basketball court has become non-freedom, and athletes accept it without fighting for it. Some time ago, I read somewhere: “we die alive and live dead.” How much reflection is needed on such phrases; yet, we fail to notice, worn down by the ephemeral materialistic interpretation of freedom taught as its essence. And yet …

Through the court, those lines, those diagonals, we teach paths of personal growth, journeys in search of creativity and personality that make you, the young player, unique. Freedom - mental freedom [here I refer to Nietzsche’s definition, “the feeling of being above the clouds” - the freedom to be yourself, to feel the court, will define the performance requiring serenity and concentration. The emotion will explode, contaminating posture, running, choices - your essence as an athlete in its entirety. No reality, perhaps very few in a broad sense where the majority dictates the absolute, vanish into the zero of discourse, benefits the athlete from training in creative freedom, individuality, and their future life. No, we don’t talk about abstract concepts, we talk about the court, we talk about life - our life and your life, you as a unique person. We take the athletes and observe them, listen to them, hear what new and good things they have to say. We look into their eyes, curious about the world, hopeful and dreaming. We study paths to free their potential and let their destiny sprout, whatever it may be. We offer training programs that involve personal growth in the broadest sense, working on different expressions of the Athlete: mental, physical, technical, postural, and so on. We believe it’s never about what you do, but how you do it. A true coach must always listen to the melodies coming from the hearts of their athletes. A true Athlete must not enter a communicational silence, becoming a product of a script written by others if they wish to grow in their chosen sport, if they want the game to become [and I use present tense] an expression of themselves and not a deprivation of their dreams. Our court offers spaces for creativity, freedom to choose and feel free, to understand its lines. The markers become evidence, the diagonals and angles become positioning, forming IQ - that instinct and ability to adapt to any situation outside of useless schemes that find very little space with us [to be honest, mental scheming excepted] because they are mentally set for the creativity of the individual and their capable interpretation of the moment. We don’t suffocate instinct; we reward it, guide it, capture its beauty and let the artist paint it on the rectangular canvas so it can become art for those watching from the sidelines, who draw the abstraction of its forms. We define concepts, not rules. We teach having an open mind because an open mind allows you to learn what you like and add it to what you believe in - and this leads you to the next step: make it yours and, by reflection, learn how to win. [Champions have always been players who know the meaning of innovating and risking.]

… “and not deprivation of their dreams” … I wrote a few lines above and I want to pause to revisit some concepts, not rules - concepts based on very solid pillars. The fear imposed by the ego on the bench generates anguish, shame, fear of confrontation [after all, if you say or do what the ego does not allow, you don’t play]. It stops potential champions, and the court immediately reveals the disaster, the violence. Returning to that value and explanation of “freedom,” we highlight that almost always fears are constructed and imposed on us by suffocating our personality to safeguard the infamous bench ego… how pitiful. A culture we try to eliminate in those who have breathed it by using Yoga techniques and Eastern philosophies like Kaizen, which means continuous improvement. The key to this principle, which we encountered years ago on a journey to the East in search of tea, is to always try to be better - it doesn’t matter how small or big the steps you take are - always learning, growing, and improving yourself in every possible way. An idea that should always remain at the bottom of our minds. Gaman, another Eastern philosophy, means to endure or tolerate any adversity that comes into your life. Be strong and focus on what you are trying to achieve. Life can be very difficult at times, but this value should keep you focused and aware that everything passes. It teaches the ability to resist submission that goes against your principles and to persevere until the goal is reached. We believe it is possible to train without fears and anxieties. We believe it is possible to create a winning team on a basketball court. We believe training should be nothing but living a peaceful moment where the “I must win” or “I must look good to the ego - never to myself - and not make mistakes or else I’ll be punished” should not exist. The court, for us, is integrity, self-confidence, empathy.

Integrity means staying true to your beliefs, moral values, and principles. We believe it is an important part of your identity - something that will allow you to remain consistent with your principles no matter the influencing factor or its strength. Self-confidence - one of the most important things we’ve learned in life - is that the only thing we have total control over is ourselves. Having the ability to find your path and rely on your skills to get things done is essential. Empathy defines the ability to understand another’s feelings. This value requires continuous practice, experience, and sensitivity to improve. Our perception of things - and therefore of the game - is always one-sided, but the court does not allow it; it requires, imposes considering teammates’ perspectives, provided you truly want to play the Game. In summary, the Court is lines, diagonals, and angles marked on the ground and in the abstract. The Court is Empathy, Integrity, and Confidence marked in the heart and mind of the Player. The rest… is something else. You are worth what you are, what you think, and what you can give and will give on the court, whether you succeed or just try - because for us, You are You, regardless.

 Begin Chapter 2 - Theory of image - Teoria dell'immagine

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what value do our “photographic” Stories hold, shaped by both words and images ...

We would like to attempt tracing the future of the Game through the history of art, through creativity narrating the distant past, the present, and what is yet to come. Perceiving a world of ineffable beauty - of body, movement, transcendence toward an inspiring soul, complexity before us -we simply try to reproduce or shape it by following strange labyrinthine paths, unpredictable like Friendship, authentic like coherence, composed of everyday enchantments that only a lively mind knows how to create but that will engage those who have the chance and the mental capacity to follow them. We start from afar, aware that creativity, broadly understood including inventiveness, has always been part of our existence and has always outlined the future of humankind. In the distant past, forms are primitive, barely sketched by the feelings expressed but intertwined with a kind of magic - or at least so they appear to us in cave paintings, on cave walls where images represented the first word, the first syllable, a step toward alphabets. That was the creativity of that time that carried its story to us. Over time, flair is refined, creativity creates new technologies, and we achieve perspective. The arrangement of objects in space eliminates yesterday’s metaphor and gives way to a clearer vision; the center of the scene thins, needing to be indicated more subtly. Depth extends; the world is now in our hands - or at least in our brush that arrests time... the painter, the artist - or at least the one who yesterday was defined as such. From the painter, at least as we know and define him today, creativity gifts us other tools such as the camera, which imprisons vision, freezes the moment with a flawless image of reality simply by using a mechanical device. If an artist is judged, in large part, capable insofar as his pictorial representation aligns with what the eye sees, with verisimilitude to reality, with how well he reproduced what the human eye observed, what happens in the current historical moment when pressing a button immortalizes yesterday’s representation with no nuance at all, so clear, sharp, without falsehood? Perhaps art so conceived loses meaning, becomes implausible, without future? We do not believe so. We believe art is enduring, too cautious and indispensable to allow itself to be suffocated by something as simple as representing a moment captured with a single click. It changes, regenerates, finds new forms and ideas, transforms into intellectual creativity, vital creativity. The creative, we believe, is one who explores not so much reality but perception, narrating the story of a moment. How the Game fits into this unique reading of art is quickly explained. We hold that the athlete is an artist, as he creates and interprets; the court is his canvas, his creativity his brush, and with these tools he gives boundaries and depth to his perception of the Game, boundaries and depth to his Story. This is our Basketball. The capacity for creative expression shapes the athlete in the Game today but also shapes tomorrow, because acquiring a positive and dynamic mindset will also accompany life in the future, leading him to conceive a life always aimed forward where the past simply becomes experience and not an end with which to continue relating and dialoguing. [And unfortunately, too often it is otherwise.] We believe in a basketball that is concise and complex, harmonious and disharmonious, broad and creative depending on situations and the most appropriate moment for each scene on the court. Indeed, each scene corresponds to a style that gives it a characteristic tone, albeit sometimes not completely homogeneous, but this is part of the artist, of his creation, of his language, of his interpretation. We consider creativity and tactical intelligence as defining traits of the athlete. Creativity is increasingly significant in sports, increasingly a hallmark of champions - that ability to analyze complex situations, that capacity to develop versatile, sometimes extraordinary solutions. Creativity, as mentioned before, that in life will be the expression of the ability to always find the ideal solution to a given problem, creativity that will allow the athlete to anticipate the opponent’s future moves, to always be one step ahead. Creativity sought and demanded by us, contrary to a world that defines it as unusual, worrying, as it undermines the figure of the incapable trainer. That uniqueness, rare certainly if not cultivated, flexible, original as much as the solutions suitable to the particular moment that will make the athlete the difference on the court. We believe creativity can be taught, shaped, developed, and for this reason we tend to divide our training approach into two segments.

The first, creativity as an inherent gift of the athlete, where we examine mechanisms and psychological processes during training that lead to creative ideas and we try to guide these conditions to their fullest expression. The second, creativity as talent to be formed beyond genetics, which we try to develop in athletes by creating training conditions aimed at enhancing creativity through diversification, intentionality, and subjective practice. Thus, prevention [focus on responsibility and values] and promotion [attention to aspirations] become training priorities, generating creativity and today increasingly supported by empirical evidence in the fields of cognitive activities and sport-related frameworks. We believe that today “the coach,” generally speaking, tends to focus on the complete apathy of doing, acquiring training through the machine, leaving all decisions to it, instructing and shaping, but the machine, the automata, have predefined settings that cannot read the body of the individual, nor his essence, simply do not touch his soul, and thus robotize everything, annihilating the minds of athletes, rendering them inferior in every way to what they should and could have been. This is the looming darkness, this is the end of the Game, this is the elevation of the failure of the absolute ego of those who found their construction in the machine but are missing the truth. This is the future toward which the Game is marching today: a world satisfied by YouTube, by Apps, literally by a progeny of deities speaking unknown languages, failing to interpret the essence of the true Game, its dynamics, its postures, its spaces, its diagonals, its angles. The coach becomes a real distraction, unwittingly lacking “human vision” and capability, the caricature of reading, the smile of those at home reading the app or the link in preview, simply a pedantic creature of the lowest performances in any task that previously elevated his role. No longer necessary to design and build new athletes but simply to robotize them, making them a non-thinking machine identical to all other teammates. We believe biology must be superior to the machine, and the machine a simple aid, technology a base emulation of technical exercise, the construction of a model to be shaped on the individual athlete’s body according to the biology that will mark the real progress of the soul.

We are aware of the elegance of technological intelligence, but an elegance that must remain external to the boundaries of the human body, an evident elegance, employed not only as a possibility to transform and enrich the realm of technical knowledge, but to question the coach’s capacity who must be unique in setting both the path and the predictions, because coaching athletes today must be skill, creativity, it must be our essence, and this is what differentiates us from the one thing that seems to have disappeared from the world of the Game: our thinking. Opposite, the world beneath us darkens, we are ill-equipped to enter it and it becomes more and more complex to imagine how to participate, how we might equip ourselves to live the Game again. We are convinced that craftsmanship must return to the world of the Game, and here we evolve, even if seated, entrenched on the final curve of an exponential decline due to the standardized Italian convention, considering the modern public debate on ambition and incapacity, those untreatable debates on the future of the Game [shouted, only shouted, by Italian federations] made even more complicated by the interests and ego of consciousness and thought enclosed within every modern coach. After all, it is a survival code unlikely to be solved because it would question an entire system of true abundance of the self, a doing that often justifies one’s own life. We trust technology as an opportunity to combine artificial vision with the experience of the person who trains, with their ability to transform data into real benefits for the athlete. We trust the changes and conversions necessary so that the true values of the Game return to being normality and not obscured by a torrent that overwhelms anything trying to cultivate them. The seed of purity exists, everyone possesses it, it simply needs the will to cultivate it, to liberate its potential and autonomy.

The dynamic process of adapting to “stressful” factors and varying conditions - [and sport presents athletes with endless challenges] -is defined as “resilience,” [that capacity of an individual to face and overcome an event or period of difficulty]. It reveals the psychological factors of athletes [positive personality, confidence, focus, and social support from the entire team] which today, clouded or worse denied by the egos of coaches chasing their own podium, remain negative and “violent” in those who draw the worst from sport. A lifestyle in which the demands of competition, pressure, and stress - both physical and mental - are exaggerated by the frantic pursuit of success that never looks back, never considers the damage done to athletes, [simply guilty of not being tall and big enough]. It blindly seeks its own trophy, even at the cost of the psychological “life” of the players discarded simply for failing to fit the coach’s ego. We believe mental strength is a psychological advantage, whether innate or developed through emotional training, that allows young players to face their opponents on the court today, and in the game of life tomorrow. Consistency, trust, control, and determination - conceptualized and defined as emotions - positive emotions that only great coaches, humble coaches, are capable of building. Many arrogant words are used today by sports organizations in search of power, but few real actions are taken except those born from possessing the “least worse,” or from spreading negative emotions. We recognize that negative emotions are part of growth; we are certain that losing is a negative emotion, that sadness is a negative emotion, that guilt from violating a behavioral standard is negative, and so on. We are certain these negative emotions have the power to motivate and regulate all that is cognitive, physiological, and behavioral. We are certain that insulting and denying improvement is not emotional support. We are convinced that self-perception produces changes in relationships and life philosophy, making “must” a positive emotion, a fundamental characteristic of both the adaptation and growth process of the athlete.

We believe there are various levels of emotions running parallel to dynamic interactions - such as coach-athlete during a season. The first is almost always seeking their own podium, as clearly shown by the press and the official communications of many sports clubs, an exaltation of self as if playing against the opposing coach at the expense of the athlete’s development, who has never learned but must simply demonstrate psychological acceptance and great physical structure. The second, searching for growth and future development, strives to find positive emotions but will only encounter excessive reactions and deceptive moves that cause counterproductive tendencies and performances in the athlete. We believe in our emotional philosophy - a key philosophy of many emotions, a tendency to initiative that automatically prepares the athlete for the gesture, something functional to achieving performance and goals. We believe sport should convey strong positive emotions, that it must take into account the cognitive factor [technical knowledge and awareness of one’s actions in the practiced sport], and this must be trained because cognition plays a primary role in activating positive emotions. We dedicate time and resources to all of this. We have learned to read body language and athlete reactivity, we have learned listening and monitoring reactions, we share experiences, promote athlete independence by developing trust and respect in the Athlete-Coach relationship, create opportunities, and provide real, dynamic training free from ego. We define goals, refine relaxation techniques because it is true - as it truly is - that emotions play a decisive role in the choices we make. This reveals the significant role of emotion, completely antithetical to control, [which is nothing more than the frantic search for security and mastery over reality and others’ lives - a need born from fear that ultimately generates obsessions and compulsions] in moving the world, creating play, and shaping an individual aware of their own talents and consequently able to harness them in the choices made on the court.

To paraphrase, using the language of high fashion, BTA creates unique pieces of bold color, refined design, and elegant expression. BTA is the art and injection of a glimmer of humanity in an increasingly harsh and artificial world. BTA focuses on pieces to be loved that survive the seasons.

 Begin Chapter 3 - La Scelta - Training Theory - Teoria dell'Allenamento

In ancient times, storytelling was an event; today it is a way of life. Through social media, we play the lead role in a carefully constructed story of our own lives, exercising maximum control over every element. We imagine that the world we are building, in which our story will live, is really just another way to view that story. It is our way of telling our story within someone else’s so that it becomes real, not fabricated.

The colors of the soul are nothing but the colors of that rainbow of chances we give ourselves or set before us in the face of all the treacheries encountered on our path. A soul that Sport should nurture and listen to beyond “self,” if we were truly interested. Denying improvement, denying evolution while listening only to one’s own podium has become a daily standard in many sports institutions. Certainly, almost all coaches have a predefined intolerance for mediocrity. Yelling, punishing, benching at the first mistake, humiliating—these generate only psychological destruction. Punishment, so loved by many coaches, creates fear, not concentration during the game. [How can you expect ability on the court if players are afraid of being benched?] We believe it is the true coach’s duty to motivate, to regularly push an athlete beyond their comfort zone until they reach their maximum skill level. Managing failures and mistakes influences motivation enough to help athletes develop the ability to handle pressure and competition. Those who neglect the “weak” to feed their ego inevitably mark the end of their coaching career. We are convinced that failure and error are the first steps to success, the first emotional redirection. Our relaxed approach to mistakes allows players to remain focused in the flow of the game. We believe the soul is the most important thing.

The flight from sport and the now well-established drift toward oddities also have roots in the organization of the sports society, where for the ego’s success, psychological stress is promoted and personal identity is limited, preventing young players from having meaningful control over their lives. We believe sporting experiences should be integrated into a young person’s life, not dominate it. We allow growth in autonomy without the usual constraints of usurpation and intense involvement in the chosen sport. The end of the athlete, and the drift toward oddities, is often due to the too-late awareness of their sporting identity, perceived as unilateral and one-dimensional - reated by others - and opposed to the complete absence of their own. We try to unravel the tangle of stories filled with hypocritical selfishness, ignorance, and disregard for others—especially sensitive and exceptionally gifted young players. We try to untangle the mess where survival of the fittest crushes the weakest and most defenseless under the illusion of the ephemeral.

The mental limit - a term often used incoherently - is found in the absence of sequences and colors embedded in our daily life. Almost no one reads it; people simply settle into its convention and routine, unaware of its escalation. Your walk signals its presence; the court confirms it. The competence of the sports institution should interpret it and, through technical exercises, reshape and train it to bring out positivity on the court. Today there is little attention to the primary factor of being a player, of striving to be a champion… “some athletes have what it takes, others don’t” … this expresses a passive view of mental skills, a pessimistic and reductive outlook on human nature if, as we do, the athlete is considered a prospect for growth, learning, and development. Emotion, inner security, self-confidence, stress management … “I no longer asked what to do or how to do it - everything was automatic” … become fundamental for good sports performance and must be trained, as simply trying to master them often produces opposite results, leaving one defenseless against emotions. Believing mental strength can be managed exactly like physical strength, we created a training program - Mental Training - aimed at increasing behavioral skills, attitude, and mental strategies through motivational models, skill acquisition, goal setting, competitive strategies, and concentration, producing visible and lasting change in everyday life. The positive effects of mental training take time to appear and might initially cause a dip in performance. Results will come as mental strategies and skills integrate and become the natural way of thinking, feeling, seeing, and acting. If it is true that these psychological factors, attitudes, sensations, and concepts serve as protective factors against the potential negative effects of stress, then it is true they influence athletes’ perception of challenges, facilitating optimal sports performance with determination, concentration, confidence, and self-control under pressure. Physical conditioning may fade quickly after the athletic career ends, but mental training can create a mental conditioning that lasts a lifetime.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This phrase is complicated and dual in meaning, just like basketball, where right and wrong do not always exist. In a constant introduction of new techniques and tactics that drive continuous change in basketball, staying the same might seem wrong, just as changing with the new options the moment offers might seem inappropriate. We believe this expression, which we heard while listening to a discussion among coaches in the States, is fundamental to approaching the continuous evolution of the Game. Forty years of experience on the court have allowed us to study the universal truths of what works in basketball beyond new techniques or trends and regardless of competition level, leading us to prioritize a culture that will always impact the final success of our programs. Special emphasis is placed on relationships with athletes because even though the personalities of each generation change over time, certain constants remain. Coaching is hard work when young players make an effort to learn. When they make no effort, it is impossible.

A bad coach imposes. A good coach proposes.
A bad coach relies on authority. A good coach relies on the cooperation of the entire team.
A bad coach says “I.” A good coach says “We.”
A bad coach creates fear. A good coach creates trust.
A bad coach knows how. A good coach shows how.
A bad coach creates resentment. A good coach generates enthusiasm.
A bad coach blames. A good coach corrects errors.
A bad coach struggles to coach. A good coach makes training interesting.

More control is not the solution. When problems become critical, the coaches involved become desperate and look for a quick fix to their situation. It might seem that the solution to issues of lack and inability is simply finding better ways to control the players. Today, in gyms, it is common to hear "I’m the boss, I command," or "do this or I’ll kick you out," or "do what I say or you don’t play," but it is clear that the only person responsible for their learning is the athlete - they build their own learning for themselves. Athletes cannot be forced to learn, especially if they don’t believe in the saying that today, as already written, finds objective truth on YouTube and various social media; nor can they be forced to behave in a certain way. The choice of how to behave in life and on the court is exactly that: a choice. What an excellent coach must do is teach the players how to make better choices.

Unfortunately, the reductive view of the coach figure, who fails to inspire respect, uses coercion instead of emotions. Emotions have their memory pathways, create meaning, and guide attention. What does this mean? Scientific research today suggests that emotions help give meaning to learning, orchestrate our attention and priorities. To illustrate, think of everything that is emotionally strong for us—our brain processes it with a preferred memory pathway, therefore with stronger recall and consequently faster learning. It is obvious that coercion or any form of negative impact, high levels of stress, will lead to a systematic decline in cognitive capacity, resulting in a deviation towards youth problems which I won’t elaborate on here as they are evident to all today. Denying the reality of these effects reveals the blindness and superficiality of a passive view that considers insignificant the influence of social events such as sport in the cause/effect of these problems. It is now proven that the brain processes and consequently modifies itself based on these experiences.

The true coach must provide opportunities and solutions, creativity and emotions, as has always been our philosophy, so that choices are the most appropriate - but certainly they cannot make those choices for the athlete or impose them. We seek to propose a Choice Theory that touches on various points, among which Relationship is fundamental: indeed, we work to be active teachers and active learners because everyone learns, directly or indirectly, from someone. Without this approach, everything becomes null. The points we address are: Collaborative learning, Planning quality goals, Developing the classic “can-do,” the attitude of “knowing how to do,” Individualized programming, Involving the athlete in their evaluation, and other subjective points depending on the case. Choice Theory in our world means to strengthen and not discourage because that makes reaching the goal easier. We believe that opening the path but not leading it to the end without the athlete’s efforts makes the athlete more reflective. We prefer to guide rather than drag because this produces harmony. Choice Theory consists in knowing how to apply one’s virtues, technical and non-technical abilities, to the Game in the best possible way. We are convinced that many virtues exist in every athlete, and it is evident that these can be grouped into one great whole aimed at the optimal. We do not deny the tripartition of virtues [knowledge or rational, irascible, desirable – Plato], but we prefer to work on a choice theory free from compromises, trusting that the rational part can dominate and control the part tending toward exclusive material satisfaction, defining in sport knowledge as passion, enthusiasm, and will, and material satisfaction as everything antithetical to knowledge. We believe that the values of sport and being part of that rectangle of Play find meaning only with knowledge.

In support of this concept - which is certainly partial but follows what is for us a philosophical pillar of life - I would like to reflect on some passages often hinted at between the lines. All our sport, our basketball, starts from a dream or desire or ambition - but whatever term we choose, the certainty is that “dream” perhaps best interprets the beginning. A dream is born from within, born from my soul, and sometimes the soul falls in love with an ideal. A difficult aspect to understand for those who have made a life of concrete and ephemeral, for those who have made visual solitude the pillars of their existence. Solitude by convention is defined as isolating oneself from other human beings, and hence the growth of pretense, externalizing, false communication to escape it. Nowadays, posting one’s photos on social media seeking approval is normal, but it is also normal to scroll the finger on the screen clicking the famous “like” without even reading or understanding the content, the meaning of the photograph itself, simply at the speed of light scrolling photos and liking, liking, liking - so much so that comments, apart from a few emoticons, are rare gems. How alone one is in the truth, how much pettiness and lack of soul, how much frustration and insecurity. Likewise, there is positive solitude which is strength, that pervasive sense of distance that forces us to reflect and recognize who around us is, or is not, in resonance; it allows us to move away from toxic relationships, from negative situations, to make room for something more congenial to our view, something or someone more compatible.

Many times the fear of solitude - and we are almost always very alone - does not allow us to cancel negative vibrations, we do not align with ourselves, and the introspective journey is missing. We would define it as spending one’s life searching for external things without valuing oneself. It would be living for an ego that focuses everything on the material, and undoubtedly the education/training offered, even at a sports level, is aimed at this: the external, the material, the ephemeral. But in the end everything crumbles, the concrete vanishes and we... we simply remain without real support. Experiencing solitude sharpens your inner self, shows you the enormous strengths you have inside, and you begin to look at life from the search for an inner self. Finally, you become independent, free from stereotyped concepts, free to express your values without fear of losing something because things are simply things… what matters is you. This is a complex path to explain, complex to train but not impossible, simply requiring a great vision from those who coach. Returning to previous subchapters, everything is connected, everything is Training Theory, everything is Choice Theory. The passive view of those who design the construction of a negative thought based on material exaltation will define solitude as searching outside instead of inside, putting an end to the celebration of values that make the individual a person, and a player on the court in the case of the Game. We support solitude inward, we build through yoga or thoughts that have always generated culture, life, and philosophy in the East, a positive solitude, a wise and essential solitude that does not express externality but interprets reflection, silence, and introspection. A solitude subtracting the noise from the soul, a moment of great formation [from the book Life, Sport, and its “Stercus”], because forming an altruistic, secure, independent, and strong self will give the field players who will be part of a team aimed at winning.

With solitude, you begin to enter inward, you look at yourself and connect on different levels, it forces you to awaken your talents that otherwise would remain reluctant to be expressed. You return to look at your soul, relate to it, and then dreams become present again and perhaps... more achievable. And if there is positive solitude and negative solitude interacting with performance on the court, there is also a physical and physiological need at the training and competition level invisible in today’s sports facilities, where the only goal is not the training, health, and future of the player but the exaltation of his ego on the bench. We, unlike and strangely against all the champions of emptiness, educate ourselves and grow in themes valuing the future, invest in technologies, limited by cost in the money-master’s thinking who discounts their absence in front of the genesis of the man becoming who loses out to the one who sponsors only the economically sensible.

From here a futuristic analysis in dark tones. The proclaimed ignorance of the bench coach [after all, 40 hours are needed to qualify as a coach in Italy] that generates future pathologies in today’s youth is unable to grasp the difference between preparation and competition, let alone what the main conditioning component is, lacking periodization and singularity/uniqueness created on the individual athlete - that famous nonexistent program needing time dedicated and technical-athletic ability. Perhaps simply using another word we recognize as a must - the respect for the boy in his becoming of physical and mental man - becomes truth.

I would like to enter a specific analysis to which today perhaps very little attention is given despite its importance. [Future problems are only yours, boy.] We use smart wearable sensors that provide studies and data on the physical and physiological demands during training, subsequently identifying which and how much energy supply is required during competition [oxygen demand estimated from heart rate], along with other important data. Basketball is a sport where athletes are required to exert forces in isolated or combined dynamic actions as well as in isometric actions. Remote heart rate monitoring provides real-time estimates, and this monitoring offers coaches the opportunity to adjust the intensity or duration of a training session.

Aware that the intensity of competition can be quantified - and without delving into tedious technical-scientific arguments, as this is not the place - it remains clear that it is possible to design and build customized training sessions that replicate similar situations. Basketball has evolved, at least beyond the Alps; players are becoming more athletic and faster, in contrast to those who still view physicality as the fundamental basis and safeguard of coaching shortcomings... “I lost because the opponents were bigger”... a fantastic, inconclusive cliché, despite being visually evident and real is the increasing absence of true centers in basketball. Shaqs, Alonzos, and Wilts are disappearing, making way for aggressiveness in its most human sense - not vulgar or violent, but simply more creative, technical, and rational. Great technique has brought NBA teams to the top of the league. Allen Iverson made history, as did Reggie Miller and many others... there, in that world, in the world of technical research, the physical is sought and produced to the point of exhaustion by the unconscious and unknowing. We embrace great technique, great personality, great creativity, great humanity... we endorse your great complexity. We train with this goal in mind, stepping aside during the match to let you show and paint your art, letting you understand the mistakes we will confront in the next training session. The best masters, in arts and crafts, are those who know how to encourage, stimulate, and govern the intuitive process that leads to an unexpected solution. Elegance, in its broadest sense, and functionality are inseparable parts of a whole. What matters is understanding that emotion and reason are not separate. Perception is a whole and must be understood as such. Effective communication from a coach must satisfy the demands of rational thought and, at the same time, those of athletic characteristics and feeling. It is illusory to hope that a valid idea or a moment of genuine creativity will suddenly emerge from nowhere. There is a long and profound preparation process before the resolving synthesis emerges seemingly spontaneously. Creativity is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent experience, sensitivity, and attention to human values.

 Begin Chapter 4 - To be us

... “It is not enough to look; one must look with eyes that want to see, that believe in what they see.”  ... [Galileo Galilei]

Dynamism. A vision spanning 40 years that leads us to draw the classic lines or sums that interpret our reading of life. The dynamism of the moment of growth shapes the definition of being tomorrow, and we glimpse this course on the playing field, sensing its importance or its absence. When a young person lives in a dynamic environment - whether family or the background of their daily life - the vitality of the soul becomes visible in everything. The court reads it immediately, interpreting creativity, desire, and the intensity to evolve. Groups of youths oriented toward future movement inhabit joy, harmony with everything around them, and live with an eagerness to know, a curiosity to understand—antithetical to those who live stuck in today or even yesterday, in a monotonous and complacent environment that suppresses liveliness, with results plainly shown on the court, at school, and in daily life. With this transposition from the standardized and stereotyped, we continuously move in search of that intensity of the soul which will provide - or at least intends to provide - a taste of life in motion, which for those who live it always becomes an extension, while for others becomes an opening to a different world, so that the possibility of changing one’s experience is real. We allow ourselves to emphasize, dear reader, how significant it is - not just “is,” but truly significant - to increase the joy of living for young people, their curiosity, their imagination, as opposed to making them live the atrophy of a past they never experienced, that does not belong to them. The future belongs to them, and they must strive toward it; otherwise, pointing out their inefficiencies - whether in sport, school, or elsewhere - would be reductive. Forming a strong character based on values that, in sport, translate into the future, values that must be shaped on the essence, personality, and complexity of the athlete, takes on the meaning of a structure like ours, where diversity is not error, where personality is not fear, where ability is not offense nor challenge, but simply contribution. The desire to live the moment intensely without being carried away by the current of experience simply by obligation is expressed in the development of projects in economic reality, sporting quality, and quality of past experiences, to give meaning to the ticking of time that never stops... losing it makes no sense. [and we do not use the conditional]

Friendship. Our strange world is in a continuous and perpetual search for Friendship, that magnificent form of Love, the compass needle that we must never let waver, lest our morality be at stake - the guiding thread of our very existence, one of the most beautiful and rare feelings that exist. Many forms of love we may find along our path, but the Love of a true Friend, unlike other ways of loving, encloses in its meaning, in its weight, all the values that should make a man truthful. It sees the flaws, does not deny them, simply accepts them, and they become a tool of positive difference completing the soul of those fortunate enough to experience it. On this vanished feeling, we build projects with our youths, our sporting essence, our future. There is nothing better than looking into a Friend’s eyes and dreaming and building tomorrow together. In the following lines, we wish to share drops of an extraordinary tomorrow.

Chris & Aaron [Chris Van Loon Class of 1995 - Belgium - PF /// Power Forward - Aaron Davidson Class of 1996 - England - PF /// Power Forward] in 2008 gave their name to an online store specializing in hedonistic gastronomy, working on the site’s graphics and increasingly focusing over the years on researching and selecting high-quality products to offer. Now both university students, they travel the world searching for sensations, aromas, and packaging design, [because good things must be enclosed in beauty], to offer their customers who follow them on this journey. chrisandaaron.co.uk

Kevin Patterson [Class of 2000, USA - PG /// Point Guard] a lover of the world’s most popular beverage, began collaborating with Chris & Aaron on the website’s graphics and learning the various logics behind food products. In 2017, he created his own line of teas, overseeing blends, packaging, and website graphics. Now a university student, together with Chris and Aaron, he “knows” the world, trying to interpret, through his teas, its scents, its people, and their customs. The Kevin Patterson collection is more than tea; it is a journey that awakens your desire to explore and discover. chrisandaaron.co.uk

Dennis Mac Andrew [Class of 2002, Scotland - SG-SF /// Shooting Guard - Small Forward] passionate about baked goods and pastry, studying its secrets and nuances, in 2018 he launched his collection of Cookies, a typical biscuit full of enthusiasm reflecting Anglo-American tradition. He created the brand, website graphics, and learned to read ingredients as representatives of quality. chrisandaaron.co.uk

Adrien & Stefan [Adrien Roger Class of 2001, France - PG-SG /// Playmaker - Guard, Stefan Jensen Class of 2000, Finland - PF /// Power Forward] lovers of aesthetics, the world, and photography, in 2016 they gave life and name, partnering with world-class professionals, to adrienandstefan.co.uk — a well-established name in the luxury events and luxury interior design world, where the ability to capture moments and memories will define, over time, that young but attentive heart that is part of growing up in a dynamic world made of details. Today they are increasingly involved in interpreting events as active participants and able to make significant contributions to their creation. adrienandstefan.co.uk

Currently, BTA – Basketball Training Academy is engaged with its youths in two other economic projects:
1 - in the field of alternative energies, creating structures in partnership with Demetra Ltd., Dublin;
2 - in advertising, with an innovative idea filed with the appropriate offices to protect creativity and ingenuity, which will soon seek market positioning.

A world in motion where sport is part of the formative journey toward becoming a complete person tomorrow. This means that following one’s dreams and expectations becomes possible and, perhaps, even creates dynamics of change for tomorrow—a tomorrow increasingly impoverished by oddities that sport instead helps grow before the eyes of those who do not want to see.

 Acknowledgments

We believe that the moment is everything in a photograph; a successful photograph is a surprise. We think the best photographs are like poems - they are things inside your mind, your soul, your dreams. Some people can tell an entire story in a single image. It’s about putting things together, the ability to tell something more, to tell a story - your story on the basketball court.

The journey toward creating BTA has been influenced and enriched by the positive energy and unwavering support of friends, coaches, and basketball enthusiasts, and with deep gratitude, we want to celebrate some of them here:

A special dedication goes to Claudio, who taught us the value of friendship, watched the game conquer us, gave us our first taste of true basketball, who still finds time to answer every message, every call, supports every effort we make, and always walks with us to celebrate a journey we could never have imagined.

Jim Shannon, Ganon Baker, Greg Kampe, Micah Lancaster, Joe Wootten, Ed Tseng, Steve Christiansen, Phil Martelli, Keith Dambrot, Bo Ryan, Rick McGuire, Hubie Brown, Larry Shyatt, Matt Woodley, John Pigatti, Craig Doly, George Barber, Frank Fraschilla, Bob Hurley and many others for their incomparable advice. Some have become friends, others travel companions; with all of them we have spent many hours on the court of the Game, pursuing the same dream, the same passion, and all remain a constant source of inspiration and comparison. To all the Coaches who collaborate with us today and everyone who has supported us over the years working in and for BTA, thank you.

We would also like to dedicate this moment to the entire Basketball Training Academy family that has constantly shown interest in our work and has always encouraged us to move forward, for the trust given and for making BTA their sport and educational reference. BTA has grown beyond our initial words and values thanks to a formidable team—without these enthusiastic people, we could never have become what we are today. We believe that at the evening of life what counts is the number of thanks you have received along your path. We have never published how many trophies we have won or how many international championships, because those are won by the players on the court. What remains for the club or the coach are the smiles, the tears, the embraces, and the thanks given by the players that define the value of it all. For this reason, we want to mention some Italian players who, in a country full of prejudices, instinctively welcomed us: Lorenzo Maspero for his recognition and esteem never denied, Filippo Attolini for his attentive gaze and always transparent exchange, Simone Brioschi for the friendship dedicated to us and the attention given to our world, Simone Mastore for having deeply understood BTA’s philosophy, Paolo Viganò and Roberto Rapelli for living it without listening to prejudices, Francesco Barreca and Gregorio Braga who, despite their young age, have never hidden great affection and have always given us a sincere smile. A special dedication also goes to the basketball itself that rolling and bouncing, came into our lives giving birth to a fantastic journey that has lasted for years... and when you come back from such a journey, you will never be the same as when you left.

A special shout-out for their true Friendship - Jacques Martin, Kristian Heikkila, Evan Blaine, Joel Bertrand, Ralph Hale, Tom Nowak, Dylan Anderson.

 HEARTFELT THANKS TO

Thank you all for your support, and thank you for taking the time to explore our World, we love you all.

with love
BTA Team 

 Ending - Re-think Tomorrow

The future is a door, the past is its key.

... “There are many unhappy people who nevertheless do not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned by security, conformism, traditionalism—things that seem to assure peace of mind, but in reality for the adventurous soul of a person there is nothing more devastating than a certain future. The true core of a person’s vital spirit is the passion for adventure. The joy of living comes from encountering new experiences, and so there is no greater joy than having a constantly changing horizon, of finding yourself each day under a new and different sun…” ... [From the movie Into the Wild]

BTA is the search for a basketball that is always new, because basketball is a door through which you enter an unexplored world that seems like a dream. Many, seeing the kids, “working” with the kids, talk about “boundaries”; we believe they exist only in the minds of some people - those who do not dream, who do not see, who do not grasp. A good coach should not perform, assert, dictate, but be silent, listen, and understand. They should give up the “ordinary” for the extraordinary, even if not yet visible, because the kids carry inside them, always, a dream - and a dream like this is nourished by passion, emotion, adventures lived by others and of which they feel part in the darkness of their room. A dream never ends; perhaps dreamers end, but even they can always be prolonged in memory, in remembrance, in storytelling. When one dream ends, another begins. We must start dreaming again, always, because dreaming is giving meaning to one’s life.

Each of us can be the champion of ourselves - it only takes the will.

End of first half ...