Exit Report — EA7 Emporio Armani Milan
Place: 14 | EuroLeague Season
The Roster
Milan entered 2025-26 with genuine ambition and a roster that looked, on paper, deeper than anything the club had assembled in recent seasons. Lorenzo Brown at point guard. Marko Guduric. Shavon Shields. Zach LeDay. Armoni Brooks. Devin Booker and Josh Nebo in the frontcourt. The departure of Nikola Mirotic — who joined Monaco — created a hole, but the additions were designed to compensate through depth rather than a single marquee replacement.
The official numbers: 86.1 points per game, 33.4 rebounds, 18.9 assists, PIR of 96.6. A point differential of -48 over 38 games. 17-21, 14th place. On the road: 6-13. In overtime: 1-0.
A roster with this much talent finishing 14th is not bad luck. It is a structural failure.
The Coach
Giuseppe Poeta inherited the head coaching role when Ettore Messina resigned on November 24 with a 6-6 record and what he described as a personal decision to step away. Poeta — Messina's longtime assistant, a man who understood the system intimately — took over immediately and kept the team functional through a difficult transition.
His record as interim head coach: 11-15. Not the numbers of a team that found its identity, but not a collapse either. Poeta managed rotations professionally, maintained defensive principles under pressure, and never lost the locker room through a season that had every reason to fragment. Whether he is the right long-term answer for Milan — a club that historically demands a name on the bench — is the question the front office now faces.
What the Messina resignation revealed is more troubling than the coaching change itself. A coach of his authority and experience doesn't walk away from a 6-6 record without serious reasons. The official statement said personal decision. The subtext was a locker room that wasn't meeting his standards and a front office that wasn't providing the tools to fix it. Whatever the true sequence of events, the dysfunction started before Poeta's tenure and the results reflect it.
The System
Milan under Messina played structured halfcourt basketball — patient, deliberate, defense-anchored. Under Poeta the system continued but without the same authority of enforcement. The team averaged 18.9 assists per game — a healthy number suggesting ball movement — but only 86.1 points, indicating that movement wasn't translating into quality shots.
Defensively, Milan ranked mid-table in most categories: 5.1 steals per game, 2.1 blocks. Nothing exceptional in either direction. The road record of 6-13 captures the systemic problem: a team that could execute at home with crowd support but couldn't maintain focus and discipline in hostile environments.
The most damning number is the point differential: -48. For a roster with this payroll, against this competition, that number says Milan competed but never dominated. They were in most games. They won fewer than half of them.
The Players
Zach LeDay (13.1 Pts, PIR 15.1) was Milan's most consistent performer — a forward who operated both above and below the arc with efficiency, shot 51.4% from two and 49.5% from three, and provided the kind of quiet, reliable production that keeps a team competitive without carrying it. Shavon Shields (12.7 Pts, PIR 12.8) gave Milan a versatile wing capable of guarding multiple positions. Armoni Brooks (13.1 Pts) brought energy and athleticism off the bench and in starting roles.
Josh Nebo (10.2 Pts, 5.5 Reb, 68.1% 2P) was the team's most efficient interior scorer — a center whose finishing ability around the basket was genuine and whose rebounding was consistent. Quinn Ellis (8.2 Pts, 4.5 Ast) developed into a legitimate rotation guard. Leandro Bolmaro (9.8 Pts) provided playmaking versatility.
The problems: Lorenzo Brown played only 12 games before injury ended his season. Vlatko Cancar appeared in just 2 games. Two of Milan's most important signings were effectively unavailable. The depth held the team together, but the starting-five vision — Brown running the offense, Cancar spacing the floor, Guduric as the secondary creator — never existed long enough to be evaluated properly.
The Outlook
Milan's summer begins with a question that precedes all others: who coaches this team? Poeta earned his chance with a professional second half, but Milan is a club where the coaching chair carries institutional weight. The right candidate is someone who can command respect in a veteran locker room, build defensive identity, and win the kind of close road games that this team consistently lost. Whether that is Poeta or someone brought in from outside is the club's most consequential decision of the offseason.
The roster core is worth keeping — conditionally. LeDay, Shields, Brooks, Nebo, and Ellis form a legitimate foundation. The condition is health: Lorenzo Brown at full fitness for a complete season changes Milan's offensive ceiling significantly. His ability to create advantages off the dribble, make decisions in pick-and-roll, and give the offense unpredictability is exactly what the team lacked through most of 2025-26.
The second priority is a genuine first option. Milan's points were distributed across six or seven players without a clear hierarchy in crunch time. When the game was on the line in the fourth quarter, there was no designated closer. That has been Milan's structural problem for three consecutive seasons. Adding one player — a wing scorer or guard capable of generating his own shot at the end of shot clocks, in tight games, against set defenses — would transform this roster from competitive to dangerous.
Interior reinforcement is the third lever. Nebo is excellent but cannot play 38 minutes. Bryant Dunston played 17 games. Milan needs a backup center with genuine EuroLeague capability, not a developmental piece filling a roster spot.
The pieces are there. The ceiling is real. But Milan has said that for three years running and finished in the bottom half every time. Until the coaching question is answered and the injury-free version of this roster actually takes the floor together, the outcome will be the same.
