Umana Reyer Venice is one of the oldest clubs in European basketball and has a story that deserves to be told. After finding big success in the early 1940s, winning consecutive Italian League crowns, Reyer spent 75 years without winning any major title.
The Club Scene: Umana Reyer Venice
Club Scene
9 mins read
Umana Reyer Venice is one of the oldest clubs in European basketball and has a story that deserves to be told. After finding big success in the early 1940s, winning consecutive Italian League crowns, Reyer spent 75 years without winning any major title. In the meantime, great players both Italian and foreign wore the jersey as the club played its games on the first floor of a beautiful palace. It also lost a continental championship game against all odds, in the most incredible way, when everything seemed to be said and done. At some point in the 1990s, the club had to start over from the Italian sixth division. Reyer never gave up and not only returned to the Italian league, but has been able to win one title in each of the last three seasons, conquering Italian League crowns in 2017 and 2019, and a FIBA Europe Cup trophy in 2018. In its second 7DAYS EuroCup season, Reyer has had a terrific start, qualifying to the Top 16 with great authority. Now, it wants to add more hardware to its roll of honors.
The club was founded even before the game of basketball existed, in 1872, by a young teacher who moved to Venice, Pietro Gallo. He made a partnership with another young teacher, Costantino Reyer, and founded Societa Sportiva Costantino Reyer as a gymnastics club. The sports company was immediately welcomed in the city, which lent one of its best arenas, Palazzo Diedo, to host the club and its activities. The club quickly started to add new sports such as fencing, weightlifting, athletics, rowing, and boxing, among others. The club had its first contact with basketball in 1907, on the occasion of the 7th National Gymnastic Competition. It was a Tuscan teacher, Ida Pesciolini, who first showed the game to her students in a military facility. Seven years later, in 1914, the club moved to a bigger space in the heart of Venice, the Scuola Grande Della Misericordia, originally built in the Gothic style from 1308 onwards. Reyer Sports Club overcame logistic obstacles to transform it into a sports temple in Venice.
The club's basketball section was opened in 1925 and it would quickly become a driving force. A basketball court was opened on the first floor of the Misericordia building, famous for its wooden grandstands and its frescoes on the walls. With time, it became one of the greatest basketball temples in Italian and European basketball, hosting epic games and great basketball superstars, and one of the most unique basketball courts in the history of the game. The Misericordia was home to the Reyer Sports Club until 1991. Reyer started competing in Italian competitions in 1930, playing in the first division. Led by homegrown superstar Sergio Stefanini, who played for the team for a full decade, Reyer won back-to-back Italian League titles in 1941 and 1942. Stefanini would also play 62 games with the Italian national team, scoring 681 points and leading it to a silver medal at EuroBasket 1946. That year, Reyer also won its only women's Italian League crown.
Reyer would compete in the Italian League elite until 1957, when it descended to the second division. The team was promoted to the elite again in 1964, but just for one campaign, and reached the Italian Cup semifinals in 1969, losing against Ignis Varese in a two-way series on points difference, 134-133. The club had to wait until 1976 to return to the first division. The following season, Reyer made its debut in European club competitions, taking part in the 1976-77 Korac Cup. After downing Karsiyaka of Turkey and ESM Challans of France, the club made it as far as the quarterfinals group stage. By 1977, the basketball team left Misericordia and started to play in PalArsenale, with room for 4,000 people. Even when the club went back to the second division, Reyer landed two of the best players available, who joined the team in the 1980-81 season: Yugoslavian basketball legend Drazen Dalipagic and former ABA MVP and NBA champion Spencer Haywood. They joined a good core of Italian players such as Fabrizio Della Fiori, Luigi Serafini, Lorenzo Carraro, and a young Andrea Gracis.
Reyer took part in the 1980-81 Korac Cup, in which Haywood and Dalipagic helped the club, called Carrera Venezia then, to an undefeated quarterfinals group stage, reaching the semifinals against mighty Dynamo Moscow. Reyer won the first leg, 119-104, behind 43 points from Dalipagic and 30 from Haywood, and held on to its lead in the second leg, qualifying despite a 104-101 loss, overcoming a dangerous 62-48 halftime deficit. Joventut Badalona was its opponent in the championship game, played at Palau Blaugrana in Barcelona. Carrera led 82-90 with less than 2 minutes left and kept a 90-92 lead and possession with 4 seconds left. Giovannoni Grattoni slipped and turned the ball over with a second left. Joe Galvin took an inbounds pass for Badalona sent the game to overtime with an unthinkable turnaround jumper, 92-92. Carrera had the final possession of the game but Della Fiori missed around the basket and Joventut won 105-104 with 27 points from Gonzalo Sagi-Vela. Haywood led Carrera with 30 points, Dalipagic had 25 and Della Fiori 20. The team was between the Italian first and second divisions in the 1980s. Dalipagic left to join Real Madrid but returned in 1985, playing there for three more campaigns and showcasing his legendary shooting skills. Reyer kept competing well in European competitions in the first half of the decade, reaching the Korac Cup's quarterfinals in 1982 and 1984 with head coaches like Waldi Medeot, Antonio Zorzi and the legendary Aza Nikolic (in the 1982-83 season) and players like Grattoni, Sydney Wicks, Bruce Seals, Alessandro Fantozzi, Wendell Alexis, Joe Binion or current head coach Walter Di Raffaele. It would take Reyer over two decades to return to European competitions.
Reyer kept competing at a reasonable level in the early 1990s, with stars like Ricky Brown, Jeff Lamp, Mark Hughes, Steve Burtt, Aramis Naglic and Andrea Meneghin, but the team hit bankruptcy at the end of the 1995-96 season and went down to the Italian sixth division. It had to merge with another team, Chirignago-Gazzera, and change its management. Slowly but steadily, Reyer started to climb back in the Italian rankings, reaching the fourth division in 2000 and getting promoted to the third level in 2006. Reyer went up another level at the end of the 2007-08 season, reaching the Italian second division. Despite being close to promotion to the Italian elite in 2011, when another team failed to make its financial commitment, the Italian High Court of Sports Justice imposed the admission of Reyer to the 2011-12 Italian League.
It took Reyer 16 long seasons to get back to the Italian League, and its first goal was to establish itself in the elite. Reyer did much more than that, reaching the Italian League quarterfinals in 2012 and 2013 with Andrea Mazzon and stars like Keydren Clark, Tamar Slay, Yakhouba Diawara and Tim Bowers. Reyer lost against Milan in the 2012 playoffs and Varese in 2013 but did much better in the 2014-15 season. Veteran coach Carlo Recalcalti took Reyer to the Italian League Finals in 2015, putting together a very functional team led by Jeff Viggiano, Hrvoje Peric, Jarrius Jackson, Phil Goss, Pietro Aradori and Tomas Ress. Reyer finished second in regular Season with a 22-8 record and downed Cantu in the quarterfinals, 3-2, winning do-or-die Game 5 at home 88-73 behind 24 points from Goss. Reggio Emilia stood in its way in the best-of-seven semifinals, despite Reyer's 3-2 lead in the series. Reggio Emilia won Games 6 (82-78) and 7 (63-70).
Reyer returned to European club competitions in the 2015-16 7DAYS EuroCup. Led by Mike Green, Peric and Goss, Reyer survived the regular season but could not survive the Last 32 stage due to a critical home loss against Polish side Stelmet Zielona Gora in a do-or-die game in Round 6. It all clicked a year later, in which 75 years after its last title of any kind, Reyer lifted the Italian League trophy, starting a successful new era for the club. De Rafaelle had taken over as head coach and the team had new stars like MarQuez Haynes, Mike Bramos, Melvin Ejim and Tyrus McGee, joining Peric and Ress as the core of the team. Reyer was second in the regular season with a 21-9 record, defeating Pistoia in the quarterfinals and Scandone Avellino in the semis to storm into the championship series against Dolomiti Energia Trento. On June 20, 2017, Reyer beat Trento 78-81 in Game 6 of the finals to conquer its third Italian League title - and first since 1942! Ejim led the way with 15 points while Ariel Filloy and Haynes each added 14.
Reyer has managed to lift a trophy every season since then. In the 2017-18 campaign, Reyer won the FIBA Europe Cup. The team joined the competition in the playoffs after being eliminated from the FIBA Champions League and went all the way, defeating Egis Kormend of Hungary in the eighthfinals, Nizhny Novgorod of Russia in the quarterfinals, Donar of the Netherlands in the semifinals, and Avellino of Italy in the finals. Reyer won both legs, 69-77 in Avellino behind 14 points from Austin Daye and 81-79 at home with 16 each from Peric and Haynes. Last season, Reyer managed to win another Italian League title with a similar path as in 2017. A second-place regular-season finish led to playoffs wins against Trento in the quarterfinals and Vanoli Cremona in the semifinals. The title series against Dinamo Sassari went down to do-or-die Game 7, played in Venice. Reyer gave Sassari no chance, roaring to an 87-61 behind 22 points from Bramos, 21 from Haynes and 13 from Daye. Back to the EuroCup for a second experience, Reyer made it to the Top 16 as the first-ranked place in Regular Season Group B with an 8-2 record. Reyer has found the way to be successful, opening a new golden era in club history, and wants to keep it going.