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“Hopefully, we can achieve something special with the team. The goal, of course, is to go as far as we can”, Danilo Gallinari told Eurohoops about the expectations of the EuroBasket, with Italy having secured its presence in the Round of 16 and having a chance to finish on top of Group C. And while this is his last tournament with the national team, it’s not necessarily also the end of his career: “I haven’t thought about the end. I thought about the end with the national team, so this is the last summer with the national team. As far as basketball, I don’t know. Now the energy and the focus are with the team game by game, and to do the best we can in this competition”.
FIBA EuroBasket: Simone Fontecchio has broken Italy's all-time #EuroBasket scoring record . 39 - Simone Fontecchio | 2025; 36 - Andrea Bargnani | 2011; 33 - Antonello Riva | 1989; 33 - Danilo Gallinari | 2015; 32 - Antonello Riva | 1987
Danilo Gallinari can't picture himself playing in the NBA
“Would I see myself in EuroLeague in the future? No," he categorically responded. "Apart from the case of Milano, which I’ve spoken about before, it’s very difficult. I’m not young anymore and I’ve been living in the U.S. for many years. For my family, moving back and forth in Europe wouldn’t be easy. It would have been a beautiful ending, but I don’t think it will happen.”
By 2024, however, the NBA no longer offered the same openings. With rosters increasingly favoring younger, more athletic forwards and financial constraints affecting veteran signings, Gallinari found himself on the outside. At one point, Gallinari found out that his NBA days were over. “I understood my NBA career was coming to an end when from September [2024] to February [2025] no calls arrived. Well, some calls did arrive, but the situations didn’t fit with the salary cap numbers of many teams," he recalled. "At that point, with the relationship I had with Carlos Arroyo, he gave me this opportunity and I took it.”
Stopping Antetokounmpo has long been the unsolvable puzzle of European basketball, and Gallinari was honest about the challenge Italy faced: “It’s always difficult to stop him. I think we did a good job, but he’s so hard to guard. We were close a few times to tying the game or going ahead, but against him you need 40 minutes of intensity and energy," Gallinari told BasketNews in a postgame chat.
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Despite the defeat, Gallinari refused to panic. His experience told him that tournaments rarely follow a straight line: “The goal for Italy is to get through the group stage. We need to think game by game. It’s only the first game, the road is still long. I’ve been in competitions where we lost the first, won the second, lost the second, won the first—anything can happen. We just need to stay focused on the next one.”
Danilo Gallinari sets the record straight once and for all on Olimpia Milano. A few days ago, the “Gallo,” fresh off a championship in Puerto Rico, once again spoke about his “dream” of ending his career in Milan, but admitted that, as of today, “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I consider it very, very unlikely. The more time passes, the more complicated it seems.”
“Let’s make this clear once and for all. First of all, in order to return to Milan, you have to be wanted. That it was my dream? Of course it was – it always has been. I’ve always said it. Even during my last years in the NBA, I thought about coming back to Milan,” Gallinari said. “But again, to return, you have to be wanted. It’s not like I wake up one morning, make a call and say, ‘Hey guys, I’m ready to come back, do you want me?’ That’s not how it works.”
Danilo Gallinari: “I thank all the teams that reached out, showing interest—even while I was under contract in the U.S.—to ask what my situation was or what my future plans were. But I have never received a phone call from Milan. To come back, you have to be wanted. At 37, it’s now very difficult to return to Europe for both basketball and non-basketball reasons.”
Alessandro Luigi Maggi: EXCLUSIVE 🇮🇹 Italbasket, the 12 players for Eurobasket 2025 will be announced after the Azzurri land in Cyprus. Danilo Gallinari was not included in the roster for the match against Greece, Riccardo Rossato was not used. ✅ The conditions of Pippo Ricci and Nicola Akele, who suffered two hard blows in a “not so” friendly match, are not causing concern.
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Danilo Gallinari on returning to Europe: 'I consider it very, very difficult'
Meanwhile, in Milan, some still dream of one last Gallinari homecoming with Olimpia Milano, the club where he first became a star before making the leap to the NBA. Gallinari himself, however, poured cold water on that hope. “Returning to Europe and to Milan? It’s a dream. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I consider it very, very difficult. The further we go, the more complicated that scenario becomes.”
The pregnant wife of former NBA player Danilo Gallinari has spoken out after being a victim of a shark attack off a beach in Puerto Rico, an ordeal she says has affected her physically and mentally. During an interview with "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Aug. 14, Eleonora Boi, Gallinari's wife, said the incident on July 31 left her "traumatized." Boi, 39, is a sports journalist who was six months pregnant at the time of the attack, which occurred near the shore of a crowded beach in Carolina, a municipality in the northeastern part of the U.S. territory, just east of San Juan.
The wife of the former New York Knicks and Denver Nuggets forward told the TV program that she was swimming in waist-deep water with the couple's two young children when she was suddenly bitten on her thigh. "I felt a strong pain, and my thigh was burning, but my idea was, 'Maybe it's a huge jellyfish.' But in the reality, it wasn't a jellyfish," Boi said, per "Good Morning America." "I started crying and screaming and I was screaming for help in Italian." In an Instagram post following the attack, Boi wrote that she was recovering from what she called the "worst day" of her life.
Danilo Gallinari retiring from Italian national team following EuroBasket
Danilo Gallinari, in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, confirmed that he will retire from the Italian national team following EuroBasket 2025. “I’m missing a medal with the national team, and then I can be happy. It’s also hard to quantify what could have been and wasn’t: I started with the Azzurri at 17-18 years old, when the 2004 Olympic group was still there, and of all the possible summers since then, I missed eight. That’s a lot. Sometimes I wonder what could have happened if I had played those eight summers too — better not to think about it. Every summer anything can happen, even this one… I don’t want to put pressure on the guys, but honestly I see a team that I think is strong and can do well. I expect a lot from this group. I’m fired up for this, especially since it will be my last time with the national team, which adds some extra emotion.”
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