A History of excellence.
Dream big and loudly. Simply choose how many days you want to spend training with BTA - Basketball Training Academy, and level up your basketball skills. The skills you master with BTA - Basketball Training Academy could open the door to potential basketball scholarships and accomplishing your basketball dreams. You could follow in the footsteps of some of the most successful basketball players on the planet. Winning it was all that we wanted, and all that we trained for. Sport and creative work are often positioned as binaries. One is the domain of the body, the other of the mind, one is shaped by physical strain, the other imagination. In all sport, the amount of time spent training vastly exceeds the amount of time that really matters. The big competition or race can be over in minutes. For some sports, in seconds. I always enjoy watching divers at the Olympics, marvelling at the fact that four whole years of work come down to those few plummeting seconds, as their bodies twist through the air.
Knowing how to read Basketball is knowing how to read life. Everything we are building it is not a game, but lives of future men. Elite Training, a world-class basketball school, it’s like you’ve found a missing page from a book, but you don’t know what the book is.
TRUSTED BY - ITALIAN ALL STARS
Lorenzo Maspero - A2 - Class of 1998///SG-PG
Meriem Nasraoui - A2 & Italian National team , European Championship 2028-2019 - Class of 2002///SF-PF
Francesco Barreca - Class of 2010///PG-SG - MVP 2022 Caspoggio IT
Giovanni Poggi - A2 - Class of 1997///PF-C
Elite Training, a world-class basketball school is for the freedom seekers, the go getters, the adventurers, the rule breakers, the I want more-ers, who are searching for an all encompassing solution that enables their dreams to become reality. Come and discover our World.
Creation is the birth of something, and something cannot come from nothing. When someone creates something: a painting, a poem, a photograph, a new basketball move, the creativity comes from an idea, from a feeling, from emotion, or from a combination of ideas, feelings and emotions that are somehow ‘reborn' from all our experiences and perspectives. We believe that everyone has his own way of interpreting a sport and this is our way of doing it, our way of conceiving it. What do you think of a sport that takes away the identity and experiences of its protagonists, the Guys, for a coach's ego? We think that the responsibility of coaches is to privilege the authenticity and the “natural beauty” of his Guys.
Naked while fully clothed. That’s the concept behind Elite Training. Elite Training has a long history of speaking out, and standing up, for the things we believe in. The things can be different if we have the courage to change them. We think an artist’s job, a coach’s job, is to tell their truth from their own perspective. This work is integral to our art, because it’s a big part of how we think about the world. We hope people are motivated to do their part to make the basketball world better. Some coaches aim to present players as static and passive objects, obedient to their command, if you make a mistake you leave the court, creating just empty soul. Elite Training offers life and soul, presents a vision that has always been informed by exuberant athletes and fairy-tales that can come true. We never use guys as improbable coat hangers for impossible clothes. We take clothes and create situations where weird and wonderful things do happen. Let’s find the amazing in something that’s simple and human and real … the freedom to be who you are and what you are. That’s the choice; we’re allowed to make choices.
Gabriele Sironi - BTA Team - Class of 2007///SG-PG
Gabriele Pellegrini - B - Class of 2002///SF
Riccardo Sironi - BTA Team - Class of 2005///SF - PF
Walter Ferraioli - BTA Team - Class of 2003///SG
... "... because creativity is adapting and evolving all the time. And while it’s impossible to predict what might come next, you can be sure the world will be watching, rapt." ...
Behind a performance there is always another story, that usually goes unseen. That other story is less glamorous, often hard, lonely and repetitive, but it’s crucial to understanding someone’s creative process.
Perspective & Possibilities. A light, philosophical, touching reflection on Basketball, the kind of Play which might change the way you look at the world of Basketball. Titled Possibilities, it is a visual collage, narrated by Elite Training. If I had to sum up the message, it's that real Basketball is a state of mind. Elite Training, to do something entirely new, with exciting repercussions.
Connection & Possibilities. In times of crisis, things tend to get very generic. We felt the importance of going against this particular grain. We think people are made to feel comfortable when they are presented with oddness, because they feel less odd themselves ... and we are well-versed in observing, pinpointing and then recreating oddness for our basketball ... undoubtedly offbeat.
Future & Possibilities. We found a way to express emotion without needing to describe it. Elite Training interrogates our understanding of labels, and how they are used and misused in contemporary sport culture. Labels are not necessarily bad. They're a tool. But we can't let labels box us unto our own ways of thinking, of doing ... of being. Ask questions, expand your definitions, your vision, move beyond what you thought and learn anew. The future will be all the more exciting, and rewarding, for it. In the real future, anything is possible.
AND THAT'S WHY IT LOOKS REAL: IT IS REAL
Elite Training expresses our philosophy, a philosophy against the tide to the italian standard.
• Players must be taught options over universals, what is effective in the moment, play by play, situation by situation.
• Players must never be trained for a system or a philosophy. Teaching all skills, the opportunity should only support every system and philosophy.
• Players must never be categorized into a position based on their size when it comes to developing their skills. Every player needs to train for every skill.
• Players must never be categorized as a specialist in any way. Having a dominant strength doesn’t mean we can allow dominant weaknesses.
• The skills a player needs to train for must not be determined based on their lack or abundance of athleticism.
• Players must never be taught under strict rules and by what is the “correct” way. Teaching one way of doing something isn’t enough. Multiple habits are needed in order to effectively react to any situation.
• The current condition of a player must never determine the skills a player needs. Potential must be seen in every player.
• Players must never be trained according to their role. Roles are for coaches to give, not for skill coaches. Roles change, skills don’t.
• Players must never be considered naturals in terms of their skills and habits. Work and repetition must always be assumed and assigned.
• A player must never be asked to choose Team over Personal development.
A THOUGHT
... 'Both writing and sport are an obsessive act of faith in winning, finishing, publishing. But they are also a devotional ritual, something that must begin and end with the process itself. Unless you find joy in the moment, you can’t possibly keep going, because in the end you will never know. My old rowing coach used to say, 'Control the controllables'. As a writer, the controllables were not whether an agent or editor would like my book, whether bookshops would stock it, whether readers would buy it and enjoy it. The controllables were my words on the page. And the strange thing about writing—and about sport—is that even though it is a long, hard slog, there really are moments of joy. Of course there are days of training that are cold and miserable, sessions that you “survive,” hating every minute of it. There are days of writing like that, too. But there are the days when you transcend, when you achieve a kind of flow, and it feels easy and wonderful and free. I always found the highest degree of flow during races, when you had to move somewhere close to instinct. In a Game, you need to be able to react quickly, trusting muscle memory to keep your movement fluid and smooth even as you change tactics according to what your opponent is doing.' ...
Time to act.