James Percival Hardy, an unforgettable American former NBA pivot who played for two seasons in Udine in Serie A2 in the first half of the Eighties, died at the age of 64 last December 29 of a heart attack. In Friuli the widow communicated it to the old captain Lorenzo Bettarini. Hardy, paired as a foreigner with the Yugoslavian (Serbian since 1992) Drazen Dalipagic who entered the Springfield Hall of Fame at the end of his career, was responsible for the promotion to A1 of the Gedeco 5-3-5 in 1983-’84. The team had left to save itself and included play Bettarini in the starting quintet, in the first season of A2 in his Udine, and two other young hopefuls such as guard Achille Milani and strong forward Tiziano Lorenzon. The sixth Sienese man Paolo Neri and the “engineer” Paolo Cudia, the spoiler that coach Lajos Toth used to blow up the resistance of the opposing lines, completed the rotations a bit like Mr. Massimo Giacomini did with Claudio Vagheggi in Udinese double football jump from C to A in the late seventies. Aggregate to the twelve of the rose of that Gedeco revelation were a brood of products from the nursery of that Udine basketball association such as the Friulians Giuseppe Valerio and Claudio Luzzi Conti, the Trieste Massimiliano Emanueli, the Treviso-born Michele Buosi and the Venetian Carlo Scognamiglio.
Hardy, a native of Knoxville in Alamba and who had just turned 64 on December 1 last year, had been chosen in the 1978 NBA Draft with number 11 and had arrived in Udine from the Utah Jazz after four years among American professionals, two of which also played at New Orleans Jazz and with Anchorage NK, followed up on his undergraduate resume in San Francisco with the Dons. James Percival’s first season in Udine was with coach Massimo Mangano’s Apu 1982 -83, which had Ettore Messina and Luigi Colosetti as assistants, a company to which the then apprentice manager Andrea Fadini took him. In his first Friulian adventure he teamed up with the American sniper Ronnie Valentine, who had Roberto Ritossa from Trieste in exchange. He already worked well with Milani and Lorenzon, while the play was Fabio Fossati and Marco Lamperti. Under the planks Tonino Fuss and Riccardo Caneva gave him a hand. The green line was already represented by Beppe Valerio as well as by Giampaolo Graberi, Franco Panama and Raffaele Bulfoni.
High 2.03 per hundred kilos in weight, Hardy, however, formed an incomparable pair in the Gedeco 1983-’84 with Dalipagic who, excellently matched, dragged a team that was not expected to be promoted to A1 on the eve of the championship, but in the end second only to Wineries reunited Reggio Emilia in A2 making a feat from the annals of Udine basketball. After his second lucky year at Apu, James Percival followed Fadini to Siena in his first adventure as a manager away from Friuli and also the coach Toth. 1984-’85 in the city of the Palio was, however, his last season played in Italy because he then emigrated for three years to Racing club France, passing in 88-’89 to Olympique Antibes. Finally, he closed his basketball career in 1990 at Ourense in Galicia (Spain).
A memory of Hardy can be heard today, at 4 pm and 9 pm, on Radio Spazio as part of the broadcast “Basketball and more” from the voice of Bettarini, his partner only in Gedeco, and of Colosetti, who instead trained him in both his Udine seasons, replies on Saturday at 4 pm. To hear the episode or keep the memory, the link to which you can do it is http: / /www.radiospazio103.it/album/basket-e-non-solo/, from tomorrow after the broadcast.
