<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">[imgl]http://www.thestar.com/images/thestar/img/061031_bargnani_200.jpg[/imgl]The Maple Leafs were doing interviews somewhere downstairs, but the biggest media throng at the Air Canada Centre yesterday came clamouring for the hockey club's poor cousin. And many of them were from Italy. They trained their cameras, something approaching a dozen representatives of Italian media interests, on all things Andrea Bargnani, the 21-year-old Raptors rookie from Rome. They got footage of Il Mago, the magician to his countrymen, stroking gorgeous three-point swishes. They got footage of him tossing down a rare dunk. And when Bargnani popped into the team's weight room for some post-practice iron pumping, a few enterprising cameramen even pressed their lenses against the windows to get the latest evidence that their countryman's 7-foot frame, pizza-dough soft compared to the cut-and-muscled standard of many NBA stars, is on the road to Michelangelo-worthy marble. This is, indeed, a moment of rare import. Thanks to Bargnani's ascendance as the first European selected No.1 in the NBA draft, tomorrow night's Raptors season opener in New Jersey will be the first regular-season NBA game broadcast live to Italy, where it will begin at 1:30 a.m. Two of the largest general-interest newspapers in the country are sending correspondents, as are a handful of TV stations and magazines and the many national all-sports dailies, whose prominence speaks to a nation's jock-wise madness. Considering Bargnani hails from the soccer-obsessed homeland of the reigning World Cup champions, the attention is relatively gigantic. "In 32-page (sports) papers, there will be 31 pages about soccer and one page about Andrea," said Flavio Tranquillo, the 44-year-old broadcaster and writer from Milan who will be providing the Italian play-by-play from the Meadowlands with help from Maurizio Gherardini, the Raptors' assistant general manager. "So things are changing ? slowly."</div> Source
