Massimo Cancellieri was born on July 24, 1972 in Teramo, Italy. Οn June 1, he ended his collaboration with SIG Strasbourg and, at the same time, his three-year presence in the French championship. He had started in the summer of 2021, when he began his collaboration with the historic team of Limoges. He stayed there for two seasons and he made it to the "16" of the Basketball Champions League.
During the 2023-24 season, he worked with Strasbourg, with whom he participated in both the French league (with a record of 15 wins – 19 losses, finished in 12th place in the regular season), and the Basketball Champions League (first place in the regular season in the group 5 with 4-2 wins, but failed to qualify for the quarter finals of the competition, due to a triple tie with Tofas Bursa and Cholet).
Before deciding to work for the first time outside Italy, Massimo Cancellieri was for two seasons the coach of Ravena (2019-21), while earlier and for 6 consecutive years he was on the technical staff of Armani Milano, as an assistant coach and partner of Luka Banchi ( 2013-15), Jasmin Repesa (2015-17) and Simone Pianigiani (2017-19). In these six years of his presence in Milan, he won with Armani three times the Italian championship (2014, 2016, 2018), won two Italian cups (2016, 2017) and three consecutive Super Cups (2016, 2017, 2018).
He started his coaching career in 1994 from the youth team of San Raffaele, he also worked with Teramo Basket, Montekatini, Pallacanestro Biella, Veroli Basket, before working with Armani Milano.