In 1985, as part of a Nike-sponsored trip to Europe, Michael Jordan ended up in the seaside Italian city of Trieste.
Jordan played in an exhibition game for local club Pallacanestro Trieste, wearing its jersey when he mimicked his signature logo during a fast break and dunked with such force that he shattered the backboard. The Jordan brand released the “Shattered Backboard” Air Jordan 1 in 2015 to honor the event, which has become part of Trieste lore.
The visit helped strengthen an appreciation for basketball in a city where American troops were stationed following World War II, and that engrained basketball culture was one of the appeals for former NFL pass rusher Connor Barwin and five classmates from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School MBA program for executives — aka the Cotogna Sports Group — who purchased a 90 percent stake in the club for $5 million in January. In the team’s home stadium, fans still wear the jersey Jordan wore in 1985 as they bang drums, wave flags and sing from the opening whistle.
“You walk down the street, people are wearing red and white,” said Fitzann Reid, a co-owner and finance lawyer. “If a team loses a regular-season game, grown men are crying. It’s such a passion for basketball that I didn’t know existed outside of the U.S.”
They are the first American owners in Italian basketball since Kobe Bryant was an investor in a group that purchased Olimpia Milano in 1999. And if this is the basketball version of “Welcome to Wrexham,” Barwin is the most recognizable face.
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He played four years in Philadelphia and was one of the market’s most popular athletes. He lived in Center City and rode public transit, biked to work and became a staple in the community. Parks are cleaner, playgrounds are safer and musical tastes are refined because of Barwin’s work. He’s been asked before when is he running for mayor.
The Eagles had a job waiting for him soon after he retired from the NFL in 2019, and he has been a member of the front office ever since. Now the director of player development, he went to Wharton on the side.
Connor Barwin racked up a career-high 14 1/2 sacks with the Eagles in 2014. (Elsa / Getty Images)
The group first looked at soccer, but a professor gave them a lead on Trieste, two hours from Venice and near the borders of basketball hotbeds Slovenia and Croatia — NBA star Luka Doncic grew up about one hour away. The new owners’ thesis, according to Barwin, was that “European basketball is probably close to where European football was 20 years ago.”
“The fans have been there a long time, and there’s a rich history of this team,” he said. “And if anybody asked me why this team, it’s 100 percent because of the fan base and how much they love this basketball team.”
Before his NFL career, which included a Pro Bowl berth and second-team All-Pro honors with the Eagles in 2014, Barwin played college basketball in the Big East when the conference produced eight NCAA Tournament bids during a year when it was an eight-bid conference. He has preserved relationships in basketball that now stretch into the college and professional ranks, which he thinks he can leverage to the team’s advantage, along with his NFL connections, but he’s more than just the jock of the group.
“He’s developed really strong instincts and a really solid knowledge base of what good business looks like,” said Richard De Meo, another co-owner and current president of the Trieste team who serves as CEO of the Foenix Partners brokerage firm in London. “He definitely brings that kind of sprinkling of stardust to conversations with his name and with his NFL associations, sure, without a doubt. But he’s a contributor in terms of good business instincts.”
Barwin spent three months leading an exhaustive search for a general manager before hiring Michael Arcieri last month. Arcieri worked for four NBA franchises before becoming the general manager at Varese and winning the Italian top league’s equivalent of the executive of the year award. Barwin considers hiring the general manager and the coach as the most important responsibilities for an owner, and he utilized the philosophies he learned while working in the Eagles’ front office during the search. Last Tuesday, Trieste hired Jamion Christian, the former George Washington, Siena and Mount St. Mary’s head coach, to lead the team this season.
There has been a stigma at times against American ownership in Europe. Eight Premier League soccer clubs have North American owners, as do six of Italy’s top 20 clubs, per the Associated Press. Every sport, league and club offers its own nuances, but after spending autumn Sundays in Philadelphia, Barwin found it easy to draw a simple conclusion about sports ownership: You’re a steward of the franchise. It’s not your team — it’s the fans’ team.
“I think playing in Philadelphia might have been the best thing to prepare me for this opportunity,” said Barwin, who grew up in Detroit as the son of a city manager. “You realize how connected you are with the fan base and the community, and you understand your role and you really understand this magical thing only works when you all sort of work together and complement each other.
“I can’t speak to any other American who’s invested in European soccer or basketball, but I think if you ever go into it thinking this is a great business opportunity and it’s all going to be done on spreadsheets and you’re just gonna hire somebody to go over there being an operator, it’s really hard to be successful.”
De Meo speaks Italian and has lived and worked in the country, and while the group has American sporting culture sensibilities, he said there’s a priority to be culturally sensitive — there won’t be a halftime show competing with the fans’ synchronized singing without consultation.
“We didn’t want to be the American owners that come in … and knew better and started to implement changes without understanding first what they’ve done in the past,” De Meo said.
What Barwin has learned in six months is how different Italian basketball is from what he follows in the NBA. A 40-minute game once a week in the Italian league brings comparisons to the NFL. There’s an investment and a meaning that might not be present in February in Detroit on the second day of an NBA team’s back-to-back.
Barwin watches games in the basement of his Philadelphia home with his wife, Laura, and two children, and wants to find a way to make it easier for American basketball fans to view their games. He has seen firsthand how media rights and streaming possibilities are revenue opportunities, and he believes Trieste offers a product that like-minded Americans can enjoy.
“It’s so f—ing entertaining,” Barwin said. “We play 30 games. We play once a week. It’s 40 minutes. And there’s promotion/relegation. So everything matters and the players can feel that the fans feel it. It’s a roller coaster ride of the season. And these are some of the best players in the world. I mean, there’s only so many people that can play in the NBA.”
He would know.
Find footage of former Ohio State star Greg Oden — the 2007 No. 1 NBA Draft pick — playing a much-anticipated game in his hometown of Indianapolis against Cincinnati on Dec. 16, 2006. You’ll see stretches where the Bearcats assign the 7-foot center to a shaggy-haired, 6-foot-4 guy who looks like a football player.
It’s common to hear players explain how other sports were their first love. It’s less common to see how deep the relationship went. Barwin played two seasons of college basketball for the Bearcats after walking on, starting 11 games in 2005-06 for a 21-win team. But he showed more promise in football, where he moved from tight end to defensive end and became a second-round pick in 2009.
Had he stuck with basketball, it’s conceivable he could have played professionally overseas. That connection made him even more interested in the opportunity with Trieste.
“If you’d asked me when I was 14 what I want to do, it was definitely be a professional basketball player, not a football player,” Barwin said. “I was just better at football. I think basketball players are the greatest athletes in the world. It’s really hard to play in the NBA, and there are a lot of great players that are playing around the world.”
The Lega Basket Serie A (LBA, Italy’s first division) has restrictions on the number of non-Italian players on a roster, and those restrictions are even tighter in a lower division like Serie A2, where Trieste finds itself after being relegated months after the purchase by the Wharton group.
Barwin says they see rules as opportunities. The academy system is different than in American basketball, allowing for a pipeline. There are good players in Italy, and the ownership group wants to become a destination for Americans playing overseas.
“If I would have known that there was this opportunity over in Europe …” Barwin said. “Italy is not a bad place to go play. Trieste is a beautiful city to go live in if you’re an American, for eight months out of the year.”
The new owners want to incorporate data analytics, and the Wharton network has already been a resource. De Meo mentioned opportunities with artificial intelligence. There are also strides that can be made in player wellness and mental health, where Memphis Grizzlies team cardiologist John Jefferies — another one of the new owners — may be able to use his expertise and connections.
The club was not purchased as a flip. The ownership group is operating with a long runway, which is why the threat of relegation, which occurred after it bought the club but before it could make many material changes, was viewed as more of an obstacle than a deterrent. The goal is to earn promotion back to Serie A, then compete to play in the EuroLeague.
The business and operations are undergoing modernization. They’re seeking non-basketball stadium events. Barwin hopes there eventually will be a new arena. And that the club can become a pipeline. Then, the Wharton group hopes to replicate the Trieste model by investing in other sports franchises.
When Barwin first joined the Eagles’ front office in 2020, his title was “special assistant to the general manager.” He has seen how many talented people work for sports franchises but had limited impact on decision-making. Part of building what Barwin termed a “modern basketball operation” is creating an environment where talented executives and coaches innovate. If they do well, they can continue to rise up the basketball food chain.
“I’m hoping we become a place where coaches can go and you can win and you can develop players,” Barwin said. “And if you can galvanize a community and a team and do it all in Italy, you can definitely go do it in the NBA.”
The Pallacanestro Trieste basketball club was founded in 1975. (Luca Tedeschi / Getty Images)
Barwin’s not particularly good at retirement.
He followed a 10-year career by almost immediately joining the Eagles’ front office; there are more exotic vacations to take after a decade of wrestling offensive tackles than a week at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala. His travels to Italy bring him to a crowded arena of screaming members of Curva Nord, the passionate fan group that supports Trieste — not a yacht on the Amalfi Coast.
“I knew that playing was going to end and I wanted to stay involved,” Barwin said. “I didn’t know exactly how — and I still don’t know exactly how — but I love sports, I love the way it brings people together, I love the people that I’ve gotten to know and work with. And I don’t think there’s many things out there that sort of bring people together and make you feel the emotions that sports do.”
Barwin wants to retire the term “retire” from professional athletes. He tells players as much in his day job.
“They’re not retiring. They’re just done playing,” Barwin said. “And for me, I’ve always thought of it that way. I was done playing football after the 2018 season. That’s it.”
He’s busier — and he makes less money — but he’s stimulated by the work. He meets with his ownership group at least once a week. If an American player is homesick or needs help adjusting to the culture, Barwin is on the phone with them. He chats with agents, confers with coaches and works with the front office.
The versatility that stretches from the locker room to the board room — and even the bleachers — makes Barwin particularly valuable to the operation. And it’s valuable for him, too. Barwin returns to the Eagles’ offices with better insight into how to do his day job.
“It’s not work when you sort of love what you’re doing and you’re excited about it,” Barwin said. “I want to be on the phone talking to people about this. And learning about Italian basketball and learning about well-run NBA organizations. I think all of this is only going to help me be better at my job here with the Eagles and whatever I do in the future.”
That’s what’s fascinating about Barwin’s non-retirement retirement. He spent one part of his day working for a general manager and another part hiring one. If only 22-year-old Michael Jordan could put on a Trieste jersey again.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: Rich Graessle, Emmanuele Ciancaglini / Getty Images)
