ARRIVING IN STYLE : Americans Ferry, Shaw Take a Roman Holiday by Playing in Italy

ROME —  Under a full moon on Piazza Navona, hundreds of people were engaged in Rome’s most popular entertainment, watching each other. Most watched among them were two innocents abroad, Danny Ferry and Brian Shaw, who have been here scarcely a month but already are known to every friend, Roman and countryman old enough to lend their eyes to the newspapers.

Their pictures are in one of them, Il Messaggero , almost daily. That is the newspaper that sponsors the basketball team they play for in the Italian League, which is not to be confused with a National Basketball Assn. or even the Continental Basketball Assn.

As Ferry, Shaw and a small entourage selected an outdoor table at a popular restaurant, La Maiella, an excited maitre d’ hustled to find the owner. Overjoyed to have Rome’s latest star attractions at his restaurant, the owner said that the chef would prepare any dish they desired. He, however, suggested the linguine pescadora.

Later, after the linguine pescadora had been cleaned from their plates, the maitre d’ returned to the table with a suggestion of his own for Ferry and Shaw.

“ Fate la bella figura ,” he said, which, roughly interpreted, means cut a fine swath.

In case they did not understand, he interpreted for himself.

“Winning is not most important,” he said in English. “It is style that is most important.”

Shaw laughed, suddenly understanding the urgency behind the message that Il Messaggero’s coach, Valerio Bianchini, has been trying for the last month to get across to his team, which, according to league rules, has only two non-Italians on its 12-man roster. Bianchini’s message, hardly surprising coming from someone who fancies himself as the Italian Bob Knight, is that of the maitre d’ in reverse.

“He’s always telling us, ‘strength first, style second,’ ” Shaw said. “He says that’s our owner’s method. Strength first, style second.”

As director of a giant agricultural concern, Gruppa Ferruzzi, the team’s owner, Raul Gardini, is one of Italy’s richest men. One story told about him is of his quest to buy a magnificent palace on Venice’s Grand Canal that was owned by an insurance company. Repeatedly spurned, he finally bought the insurance company. It was in that palace that Ferry’s head would be turned toward Italy.

Ferry’s first contact with Il Messaggero came on the night of the NBA draft at New York, where the Clippers had made the 6-foot-10 forward from Duke the league’s second choice. Torn between celebrating because he was drafted so high and agonizing because of the team that drafted him, he was walking with some friends down Seventh Avenue toward a restaurant when he noticed a man following them.

“Just to make sure, I sped up,” Ferry said. “He sped up. I slowed down. He slowed down.”

Ferry had reason to believe that the man was not a mugger. He was only about 5-8, in his mid-40s and wore thick glasses. But just as Ferry was about to confront him, the man stepped forward and introduced himself as Valerio Bianchini, coach of Il Messaggero, whose owner, Gardini, wanted to make Ferry rich.

Politely, Ferry told Bianchini to call his father, Bob, who is general manager of the NBA’s Washington Bullets.

Two days later, Ferry and his father were having lunch in Washington with the international director of Gruppa Ferruzzi. Ferry was supposed to leave within a few days for England, where he would attend Wimbledon and see his college friend, Paul Stewart, the son of Formula One driver Jackie Stewart, start his own racing career. The man from Gruppa Ferruzzi persuaded Ferry to fly first to Venice to see Gardini and bring his parents along.

Gardini put them up at one of the world’s most elegant hotels, the Gritti Palace overlooking Piazza San Marco. He gave them the run of his son-in-law’s world-renowned restaurant, Harry’s Bar, and invited them to his own palace on the Grand Canal. “It was like a museum,” Ferry said, still wide-eyed when he recalled it recently.

Before putting Ferry on a plane for England, and Ferry’s parents on a plane for a weekend at Monte Carlo, Gardini made an offer.

Ferry had heard about Gardini’s offers. On behalf of Ferruzzi, he once tried to buy out a company for $322 million.

“We need time to think,” the company’s owner said.

“Take all the time you need,” Gardini told them. “You have 22 minutes.”

Strength first, style second. They sold, with several minutes to spare.

When Ferry heard Gardini’s offer, he said, “I’ll need more than 22 minutes.” Gardini laughed.

But Ferry actually did not need much more time than that. For one thing, he believed that the offer was better than he could expect from the Clippers, or from any other NBA team for that matter.

It was not so long ago that the average salary in the Italian League was less than $40,000. Within the last decade, some foreigners, primarily Americans, have begun commanding six figures. But it was only recently that a few of the better Italians have been able to earn that much.

The league’s salaries, however, might escalate significantly with the addition of owners such as Gardini. While most of Italy’s wealthy sportsmen have bought into soccer, the country’s most popular sport by far, Gardini this year became the first among the super-rich to own a basketball team.

He quickly sent a message to his fellow owners, and perhaps to the NBA, that he was going to play this new game above the rim. His offer to Ferry was close to $10 million for five years. Guaranteed.

That last word was important to Ferry. When he injured his knee in a workout two days before the second phase of the Olympic Trials last summer, he saw his career flash before his eyes. The injury did not prove to be serious, but it made him consider how he would provide for himself without basketball.

He also had been envious of his friends at Duke who studied abroad. He had played an overseas tournament and tours every summer since he was a senior at Washington’s De Matha High School, but that was not like living in a foreign country. A political science major, he had every intention of playing in Europe after he was finished in the NBA.

Gardini made that possible before Ferry started in the NBA. And there was even an escape clause. Ferry had the option to leave after each year of the contract.

Even before he had an agent, without negotiating with the Clippers, Ferry decided that he would play in Italy.

“In a way, people can say I stuck it to the Clippers,” he said. “But I was very honest with them all along, and they were very honest with me all along. They could have handled it well, or they could have handled it bad, and they handled it with a lot of class.

But for the duration of this season, he said that he definitely has committed to Rome. Once that was settled, Gardini dispatched Bianchini to find a guard to get the ball to Ferry.

Before Ferry was approached, there were preliminary discussions about bringing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Rome. Abdul-Jabbar’s Los Angeles agent, Leonard Armato, said that Abdul-Jabbar was not interested. But Armato listened when Bianchini called later about another client, Shaw.

As a first-round draft choice in 1988 out of UC Santa Barbara, Shaw earned $150,000 as a rookie. Although he started 52 games as a 6-6 point guard, he said that the Celtics at first offered him only $250,000 for this season.

Then Il Messaggero offered him $1 million a year for two years, with an option to leave after the first year. But the team gave him only four days to decide.

“I don’t know what the Celtics offer was after that,” he said. “Everything moved so fast. But I don’t think they ever believed I was serious as far as the offer to come over here goes. I was.”

So here were Ferry and Shaw, having finished dinner and continued their stroll across Piazza Navona. Adults stared, street artists offered to draw their pictures, children asked for autographs.

Even though they were the attraction, Ferry was attracted to some of the other people in the Plaza, the young women. He joked that he recently turned his ankle by running into a curb because he was looking in another direction besides the one where he was headed. Shaw was not similarly distracted, presumably because he was with his girlfriend, Lori Butler of West Hollywood. They met at UCSB.

All three plan to enroll soon in Italian classes. About the only words Ferry and Shaw know so far, compliments of their mischievous teammates, cannot be printed in Il Messaggero. They also are brushing up on art, history and architecture.

“My father told me to make sure I didn’t come back and have nothing to talk about but basketball and beautiful women,” said Shaw, a sociology major. “He said this was an opportunity that most Americans can only dream about and that I should make the most of it.”

On a recent trip to Pisa, Ferry worried about leaning too far off the leaning tower. “At 6-10 you wouldn’t think I’d be scared of heights,” he said.

Everyone is scared by Ferry’s driving in Rome, where rules of the road often are nothing more than suggestions. “Somebody told Danny that there are no driving rules in Rome, and he took that literally,” said Greg Ballard, a former forward with the Bullets and Warriors who is an assistant coach with Il Messaggero. “I won’t ride with him without a crash helmet and a blindfold.”

Both Ferry and Shaw are driving BMWs that were loaned to them by the team, but Gardini has promised to buy them any car of their choice. Almost any car. They asked for Ferraris. “He told us to come see him after we win three Italian League championships and three Italian cups,” Ferry said.

The team also will provide them with apartments in the city when they can find time to look for them. So far, they have been too busy with the opening of Cup play, exhibition games and two-a-day workouts in preparation for the Sept. 24 start of the regular season. Meantime, they are living in an expensive four-star hotel, where Ferry already has been scolded by the management for putting his feet on a 300-year-old coffee table in the lobby.

There is so much to learn, such as to look at prices before ordering. On the trendy Via Veneto, Ferry, Shaw and Butler recently spent $6 apiece for ice cream. They had never paid so much for ice cream. Then again, they might never have had ice cream that was so tasty. This is indeed La Dolce Vita.

But what about the jobs?

Playing in the Italian League is not like playing The Palace, even when The Palace is the one in Auburn Hills, Mich.

Il Messaggero plays in the 15,000-seat Olympic arena, where Jerry West, Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas led the United States to a 1960 Olympic gold medal, and has its own jet. But it still has to take some three or four-hour bus rides to towns with 4,000-seat gymnasiums and fans that make pro wrestling crowds seem like opera lovers.

There are a few outstanding teams. With Bob McAdoo as its leading scorer, Philips Milan is the defending league champion. Darren Daye, formerly of UCLA, and Darwin Cook, formerly of the University of Portland, are expected to team with Italian forwards Walter Magnifico to make Scavolini Pesaro a contender this season. Micheal Ray Richardson and Clemon Johnson play for Knorr Bologna.

But overall, Ballard, who played two years in the Italian League before becoming an assistant coach, compared the level of play to that of small colleges in the United States.

In last Tuesday night’s opener of the Cup, a double round-robin tournament that runs concurrently with the regular season, Ferry and Shaw tired to work their Il Messaggero teammates into the offense against an inferior team from Livorno. But when Il Messaggero fell behind by 10 points early in the second half, Ferry and Shaw took over. They scored 22 of the teams last 30 points in a 91-90 victory. Ferry finished with 30 points and nine rebounds, Shaw with 23 points and eight rebounds.

Afterward, Bianchini was disturbed by his players’ tendency to stand and watch when either Ferry or Shaw had the ball. In their defense, Livorno’s players displayed the same tendency. There were 181 points scored in 40 minutes. The same length as a college game, which says something about the defense played in the league.

“We are very spoiled by watching the Americans, like Bob McAdoo,” Bianchini said. “Everyone knows he is a shooting machine and not any other thing. But in the case of Danny and Brian, we have to move without the ball because they will find the open man. There is much we can learn from them because they are the type players who share their knowledge and make their teammates better.”

But what can Ferry and Shaw learn from playing in Italy?

“This is definitely going to help their development, particularly offensively,” Ballard said. “They might think they’re being selfish by scoring 25 and 30 points a game, but that’s what they’re paid to do. Shoot and score.

“So when they go back to the States, they’re going to think more offensively, even when they’re double-teamed, and that’s going to be good for them in the NBA.”

Shaw said that Boston Coach Jimmy Rodgers told him to work during the off-season on posting up smaller guards. At 6-6, playing against some Italian guards who would have to wear high heels to reach 6-0, Shaw should have plenty of practice at that before going back to the NBA, perhaps to the Celtics. They still own his rights.

“From a business point of view, I did what I had to do,” he said. “Once I made that decision, I wanted to make the best of it. I think the Celtics understand. I let them know that I do want to come back. Hopefully, we can make things work out next year.”

As for Ferry, he said that he might play in Rome for two or three years. Or he might decide to play in the NBA next season. It depends on whether he is content here and the situation at home. He said that he was only mildly interested when he heard last week that the Clippers were listening to offers for him from Charlotte.

“I don’t have anything against the Clippers,” he said. “I’d play for them. It’s not the perfect situation, but I’d do it. It’s just that I’m not sure what they have in mind for me. I still think they want to trade me. The only thing I know for sure is that I want to play in the NBA.”

Meantime, he said that he has no regrets. “I haven’t heard one person say that they feel sorry for me,” he said.