MIAMI — International star, at age 35, coming off a championship and linked to an overseas move to a lesser league offering lesser competition.
No, this isn’t about Lionel Messi, who is not coming to Inter Miami CF any time soon (or maybe at all) and won’t soon be playing in a warehouse district in Fort Lauderdale alongside I-95 and an executive airport.
And yet, the concept itself is not nearly as far-fetched as it sounds.
It, in fact, has happened, with a South Florida connection of its own.
“Now,” the voice on the other end of the phone said, “I’m not sure we’re talking the exact same thing. But I can understand the thinking.”
The voice belongs to Bob McAdoo, the former NBA scoring champion and NBA Most Valuable Player who now serves as scout and community liaison for the Miami Heat.
At 35, as in the same age where Messi stands, when he felt he still had plenty to offer the NBA, with a recent championship hardly in his rearview mirror, McAdoo took what many viewed as a step down in competition by moving his career to Italy ... and lived to relish every moment.
“It was basically the best time of my life,” McAdoo said. “Those were six of my favorite years of my career.”
Like many, McAdoo saw the reports during the World Cup of Messi perhaps moving on from Paris Saint-Germain to possibly join David Beckham’s Inter Miami CF at Fort Lauderdale’s DRV PNK Stadium.
No, Major League Soccer is not France’s Ligue 1, let alone Europe’s Champions League. Not close. Certainly not where you would expect an immediate touch down from a player who just won the World Cup with Argentina.
But Serie A basketball in Italy hardly was or is the NBA, and, yet, there was McAdoo, in 1986, just over a year removed from a championship under Pat Riley with the Los Angeles Lakers, continuing his career in a league and country that most viewed as below his pedigree.
The difference at the time, McAdoo said, was the notion then that by their mid-30s athletes were aging out of their prime. Indeed, no less than Pele, at 35, went from the heights of his career with Santos in Brazil to the nascent North American Soccer League in 1975 and New York Cosmos.
“We’re 30 years later, and the thinking has changed,” McAdoo said. “No one is looking at Messi as being too old. You look at LeBron [James, at 37], and he’s showing you can be productive at that age. Tennis players, [Roger] Federer and Serena [Williams] are 41 and they still can play. That wasn’t the attitude 30 years ago.”
And, yet, there still was an element of the current Messi uncertainty with McAdoo those 36 years ago, when he made the decision to move on to what would become an enduring and fruitful career with Olimpia Milano.
“Once I got over there, Philly called me and wanted me to break my contract and come back,” he said of the 76ers, who at the time were fielding a team that included Julius Erving and Charles Barkley. “And I said, ‘No go.’ I ended up in Italy six years and it ended up being basically the best time of my life. I won EuroLeague championships. I won Italian championships.”
And, McAdoo said, became a better person for the experience.
“Both of my kids are fluent in Italian now, as grown ups,” he said. “It was a hell of an experience in my opinion. It makes you more well-rounded as a person.”
The Messi-to-Miami conjecture likely will resurface again, as it has several times the past few years, in part because Messi is a frequent visitor to South Florida, with a home in Miami.
And if he comes to stay, McAdoo said, it can be rewarding in its own unique way, even if not necessarily on the world’s greatest stage for his sport.
“When you do something like that,” McAdoo said, “you have to do it with full intensity. I think that’s where a lot of older players make a mistake.
“Of course, it wasn’t as strong as the NBA when I went to Italy. But it was strong. To me, it was just as exciting, because everywhere our Milan team went, and everywhere we went in the European championship, we had packed houses. We were the team to see. So it was a challenge. You don’t go over to lay down and collect a check. I went over there and played with full intensity.”
Since then, McAdoo reunited with Riley as a Heat assistant coach, sharing in the team’s three NBA championships. Now living in Boca Raton, “I’m still involved with the game, still scouting.”
And, at 71, still proud of his Italian job, naysayers be damned.
“When I went into the Hall of Fame,” he said of his 2006 induction, “they didn’t mention Italy. I said, ‘No, that has to go in there, too.’ That’s a big part of me.”
