GRAFFIGNANA, Italy  The road has faded from four lanes to two, from two to one and finally, from pavement to gravel and dust. It winds past chipped brick edifices, weathered barns and cornfields until it ends, finally, at an iron gate. Beyond the gate is a basketball court, the first ever seen in this tiny pastoral village.

The rim looks a little higher than 10 feet. The court has no lines, only a green zigzag of moss squeezed between interlocking gray and red bricks. An errant shot might end up in the tall wild grass behind the metal stanchion.

This was Danilo Gallinari’s court, and his place of solitude, where he could practice Michael Jordan’s moves and act out sequences he had memorized from the countless N.B.A. videos that lined his shelves.

“Just the basket, me and the ball,” Gallinari said recently.

This is where a spindly Italian boy  born into a farming family, the son of a modestly skilled professional player  fed his obsession and began crafting the jump shot that is now one of the smoothest in the N.B.A.