A new star shines in NBA basketball : it is the Italian-American Paolo Banchero , a player from the Duke Blue Devils university basketball team, who was
selected by the Orlando Magic as first pick in the current draft in New York.
The 20-year-old winger, 208 centimeters, is the son of a former American basketball player, Rhonda Smith , of Mario Banchero, a former university football player of Ligurian origin , is a naturalized Italian and in recent days has expressed the desire to wear the blue shirt of the Italian national basketball team.
Banchero's grandparents emigrated to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century to work as farmers and miners in the coal mines.
In the draft (or the selection of the best promises of US basketball by the NBA teams) Banchero was preferred to two other rising stars : Chet Holmgren of the Gonzaga university team and Jabari Smith Jr of Auburn.
(Unioneonline / lf)