The city of Fernando Romay, Indio Díaz or Miguel Juane had never seen an ACB League game and their only memory in the highest category of basketball dates back to a season of a historic club that disappeared, Bosco, 55 years ago. This Sunday A Coruña experienced one of its most memorable sports days. It was already the debut in the highest category of basketball, a milestone achieved by Leyma Básquet Coruña last spring. That the calendar included the visit of the current champion, Real Madrid, was also a wink in a city that organized four Cup finals and all four were white. What happened yesterday in the new home of Básquet Coruña, the gigantic Coliseum before 9,500 spectators, was a catharsis similar to that of the emergence of Super Dépor in 1992, also against the white team. The day when somehow the feeling of belonging emerged to color a memorable triumph with pride. Básquet Coruña unexpectedly defeated Real Madrid (86-85) and this Monday the city shoots all the three-pointers that are necessary.
That of Básquet Coruña is a story of faith, effort and sustainability, that of a club forged on the ashes of others who perished and that never wanted to live beyond its means. When twelve years ago it camped in the LEB Oro, the second category of Spanish basketball, it was still considered a youth club. Because in A Coruña, always so soccer-loving and blue-and-white, the sport of basket ball beats. More than 700 boys and girls fill the city’s sports centers in such a way that the club has to refer quite a few to other destinations. The ACB is the apotheosis of a journey of almost 30 years that had some hard beginnings and that forced us to sell the place in LEB Oro in 2002 in order to maintain a thread of life. “There are many things that are not seen on a day-to-day basis,” coach Diego Epifanio said yesterday after the victory. On a day-to-day basis, the club is under the direction of Roberto Cibeira, CEO of Pontegadea, the investment arm of Amancio Ortega that diversifies the assets of the founder of Inditex and focuses above all on the real estate sector.
But it would be not only risky but also inaccurate to deduce that Básquet Coruña is going to slipstream from all that tinsel. It remains faithful to the dairy firm Leyma, its historic sponsor, the traditional milk in A Coruña. The economic commitment is similar to what the neighbor Obradoiro had last year, around 4 million euros in budget, little more than the gross salary of Walter Tavares, the Madrid center who was stopped this Sunday by a supportive and hard-working team that raised a victorious guerrilla. “There have been moments this summer when it was possible to doubt that some players from last year, who helped me to be able to sit here, could help us. Well, take the great game of Ingus (Jakovics, the Latvian point guard who scored 18 points), Atu (Diagne, the rotation center who contained Tavares) or Yunio (Barrueta, a Cuban from Miami who made a triple with an additional foul that gave him the victory for the team).
Básquet Coruña’s sports bet could seem risky. Since Obradoiro did it in 2010, no one had chosen to continue with up to eight players who achieved promotion (Alex Hernández, Huskic, Burjanadze, Jakovics, Diagne, Barrueta, Lundqvist and Aleix Font). The signings were surgical and also a kind of shot in the air because the veteran ex-Madrid player Trey Thompkins is still trying to get ready. Four other reinforcements (Phil Scrubb, Brendan Taylor, Augusto Lima and Thiam, who has a reserve team card) started yesterday in the starting quintet. The Dominican Figueroa completes the thin list of newcomers. “There were agents who sent us lists with more than a hundred players,” explains the first sports director in the history of the entity, Charly Uzal, a multifunctional former player of the club. It seems like there is a risk, but his prescription this summer was caution. The club cannot allow mistakes. “If you look hard, there are pearls,” says Uzal.
The social bet has fewer doubts. At the end of last season the club had already connected with the city when it played in the central Riazor Sports Palace. It happened not without effort. In A Coruña there has always been talk of cold fans and some rancid sectors point to a certain elitism that has more to do with the absence of radical tensions. Basketball does not assume certain football codes, A Coruña was not going to be different and, in reality, it has always looked towards a basket. The old Bosco had been directed by Manuel Fernández Trigo, who later was manager of Deportivo and, for decades, of Real Madrid, a kind of one-man band who was also dedicated to journalism and who had led Medina, a group of intrepid women, in 1966. , to be the first Galician league champion in any discipline. That Bosco played under a curious tent that was known as the tits. Now Básquet Coruña plays in a monumental Coliseum where it hosts its 7,600 members. Four months ago it had 2,000, days ago it had to close admission and today there would be a line to obtain more passes if the large facility located on the outskirts of the city could be expanded. “Feet on the ground,” Epifanio prescribes just in case.
