Captain America kept his word. “I marked the date of the derby in red: it falls on my birthday. I want to demonstrate that I am always a player who makes the difference.” The confession signed by Darryl ‘Josh’ Jackson came a month ago, during an interview with La Nazione. No sooner said than done. Since the warm-up, Captain America’s face was the right one: tense, concentrated, with few smiles. In special matches the great players transform themselves and give more. And the leader of La T Gema he recognized in the derby with the Fabo one of those games. A special night experienced by the fresh forty-year-old, an MVP night that sent her to heaven Montecatini Basketball and delivered to new and deeper reflections Heronsincreasingly in the blender of a technical and identity crisis.
The Fabo showman shouted all his joy after the final siren, with the faithful La T Gema audience in the background literally in ecstasy for Josh’s play and for Andrea Bargnesi’s torpedo, plastered in Giorgio Sgobba’s face one minute from the end. The basket of the bracket, the one that crowned all the work of Jackson, protagonist of a 26-point performance that confirmed how the former Ruvo, authentic bête noire of the Herons, in B National is still to be considered as a foreigner in the most deserving sense that this term can express.
There was no shortage of stimulus for the Maltese passport on Wednesday evening. From the duel (won) with Lukas Aukstikalnis first and foremost. Last summer the Lithuanian winger was preferred to Jackson, who was explored by the Heron management and kept on stand-by for a few weeks (Jackson dixit ed.) while waiting to understand the developments of ‘Auk’s adventure in Roseto. After the resolution with the Abruzzo club and the agreement with Aukstikalnis, Fabo ‘dumped’ Jackson who felt seduced and then, indeed, dumped. And he tied it to his finger a bit, waiting, once he signed for Basketball, the confrontation with his cousins to revive the tradition of great scorer that Herons had already clearly understood from the last playoffs, when Josh had put the rossoblù defense to fire and sword, dragging Stefano Rajola’s team to promotion to A2.
And a new leap to A2 is Jackson’s goal, having arrived in the spa area to play at the highest levels again. Marco Andreazza pampers him, but he has to be careful, because the American is an irreplaceable and key element on the La T Gema board. Jackson doesn’t have a replacement. Everything is normal, because another player with that talent cannot be in the same team, but to ensure that he doesn’t arrive in April, when we start to get serious, with the reserve light on, he needs to be managed. And to do so, perhaps an addition from the market will be necessary: a guard who has creativity and gives him minutes of rest, precious to arrive ready (and not cooked) for the playoffs, where Jackson still wants to raise his arms to the sky. Just like in the derby.
Niccolò Casalsoli
