Pro Basketball Player Miss Italy Says Michael Jordan Is Her Favorite Historical Italian Figure

Michael Jordan, Miss Italy
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Michael Jordan’s domestic legacy as a cultural icon is ever-lasting. And even more than 12 years after the six-time NBA champion retired from basketball for good, apparently that reality still extends far across the globe.

Alice Sabatini, who won the illustrious title of “Miss Italia” last weekend, was recently asked which Italian historical figure she most admired. According to The Telegraph, she answered in the manner only a true basketball fan (and failed former geography student) would.

After a long pause the beauty queen replied: “Michael Jordan, the greatest player in basketball history”.

It’s not we like can really blame Sabatini for her amusing response. She’s a professional basketball player with Santa Marinella Basket in Italy’s second division, after all, and reportedly has a tattoo of the iconic Jumpman logo on her hip, too. Ball is life, right?

But we can’t completely defend the beauty queen, either.

This exchange only took place because Sabatini was receiving an ironic award from a satirical news program for previously saying – on live television, no less – that 1942 was the period in which she’d most like to live. Italy, of course, was embroiled in the throes of World War II during the early 1940s under the regime of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

[Via The Telegraph]

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