Italian national team mainstay Marco Belinelli left the NBA in the summer of 2020 after completing his second stint with the San Antonio Spurs, but he did not retire from basketball altogether. Instead, he returned to his home land – and to his home city of Bologna – to play another five years.
The Indian Summer of his career, though, is finally coming to an end. The president of Belinelli’s current team, Massimo Zanetti of Virtus Bologna, has confirmed that the 39-year-old guard will retire at season’s end, and that they are planning for life without him.
“Next year, we will have a younger team. We know Tornike Shengelia is leaving and Marco Belinelli will retire”, said Zanetti, also referring to former Brooklyn Nets and Chicago Bulls forward Shengelia, who has become one of the best players in Europe since his NBA career ended.
Belinelli, The Ultimate Journeyman
Belinelli played thirteen seasons in the NBA between 2007 and 2010, after initially being a draft selection of the Golden State Warriors. He would spend his 13 years constantly on the move, never spending more than two consecutive seasons with any of the nine NBA franchises he would ultimately play with.
However, two different stints with the San Antonio Spurs – one between 2013 and 2015, the other between 2018 and 2020 – would see him spend four years in total with the franchise, including his best season as a pro. Averaging 11.1 points per game on 48.5% field goal shooting, Belinelli was one of the league’s best reserves in the 2013-14 season, finishing 11th in that year’s Sixth Man of the Year voting and winning the Three-Point Shoot-Out.
The Spurs of that season would defeat the Miami Heat in the 2014 NBA Finals in a relatively comfortable five games, doing so through a barrage of ball movement three-point shooting that would be a precursor for the pace-and-space revolution that was to come. Belinelli, with his 43.0% three-point shooting on the season, was a key part of what made it possible.
A Season-Changing Pick-Up
Four years later, Belinelli would become one of the best mid-season free agency pick-ups of a generation.
Belinelli had joined the Atlanta Hawks in the summer of 2017, acquired from the Charlotte Hornets as an ancillary part of that summer’s Dwight Howard trade. However, the trade did not make the Hawks better, and as they flumped their way to a 24-58 season, they bought out Belinelli mid-season to open up a roster spot. Belinelli was soon picked up by the Philadelphia 76ers to a minimum salary for the remainder of the season, and along with fellow midseason pick-up Ersan Ilyasova, he gave the 76ers a much-needed bench.
The 76ers would eventually lose in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals that season to the Boston Celtics, and Belinelli would return to the Spurs, with whom he would close out his NBA career. In his European career, he won four Italian Supercups, one EuroCup and one Italian League MVP award, bookending his American career with being one of the best players in his own country.
Across his 13 seasons, the Italian national would play 860 regular season games and make 65 postseason appearances (the most of any Italian in NBA history), recording a career average of 9.7 points per game. For a player drafted only 17th, his was an excellent career.
