For decades, Italian basketball in America was a story of pioneers and exceptions. In 2026, it feels like a movement. Three names show how many roads lead from Italy to the biggest leagues in the world: a coach, a forward and a sharpshooter.

Let’s start with the newest champion. Riccardo Fois, an Assistant Coach with the New York Knicks, has just helped bring the Larry O’Brien Trophy back to Madison Square Garden for the first time since 1973, after beating the San Antonio Spurs in the Finals. Nothing about his path was glamorous. The coach from Olbia, Sardinia, built his career in the unseen corners of the sport: analytics, college basketball, then staff jobs with the Phoenix Suns, Arizona and the Sacramento Kings. New York hired him in 2025, and as an assistant to Mike Brown, he helped deliver the Knicks’ first title in 53 years. He is now the third Italian to wear an NBA championship ring, after Marco Belinelli (2014) and Sergio Scariolo (2019). Through it all, he never left the Italian national team staff, and his stated ambition after the title wasn’t another ring but a World Cup with Italy.

If Fois is the quiet mind behind the bench, Simone Fontecchio is proof that stubbornness pays off. Fontecchio reached the NBA with the Utah Jazz in 2022, and from the start he played like someone who knew how hard the door had been to open. He is a tall, smooth forward with a pure shooting touch, never flashy, but always in the right place at the right time. He moved to the Detroit Pistons, re-signing on a two-year, $16 million deal in 2024, and in July 2025 he was traded to the Miami Heat in exchange for Duncan Robinson. In Miami, a franchise that prizes toughness and professionalism above all, he found a natural home as a rotation forward in 2025-26. When his contract expired, he made it clear that he wanted to stay in the NBA. On July 2, 2026, he re-signed with the Heat on a one-year minimum deal.

Plenty of Europeans cross the ocean and bounce back home within a couple of seasons. Fontecchio has done the opposite, building a lasting NBA career one reliable, gritty season at a time. It is the kind of success that rarely makes headlines but earns lasting respect in a locker room.

And then there is Cecilia Zandalasini, Italy’s standard-bearer in the WNBA, and perhaps the most inspiring story of the three. She announced herself in 2017, winning a WNBA championship with the Minnesota Lynx, a moment that put Italian women’s basketball on the American map. Then came years of living between two worlds, Europe and the States, never letting go of either. Her return to the Lynx in 2024 showcased the weapon that defines her: a fearless, fluid three-point shot, good enough to rank her among the league’s best shooters that season. The Golden State Valkyries noticed her, and selected her in the 2024 expansion draft and made her part of the new franchise’s founding group. In April 2026, she signed a one-year deal to stay with the Valkyries, all while continuing to play for Famila Schio back home, a bridge between both worlds. And this season came the crowning chapter: another title, this time not as a bench player but as a key component of the team. When the games mattered most, her teammates looked for her, and she answered every time. In the biggest games of her life, she played at the highest level of her career.

These three careers show that Italian basketball now exports more than occasional talent. It sends coaches who win titles, role players who last, and shooters who help build franchises. For the next generation of Italian kids, the message is clear: the NBA and WNBA are no longer a distant dream but a realistic destination.