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Papa of Soviet Basketball Has Died
Yesterday the great Soviet basketball coach Alexander Gomelsky died. He was 78. He died seven years after being diagnosed with cancer. In the great list of victories won by Soviet teams under direction of Gomelsky there is one that changed whole world basketball - the victory of the USSR team in Seoul.
Gomelsky wrote more than 10 books about the basketball. He had no secret left for himself about the game. Many trainers used his methods and advice, but none of them ever reached the professional height of Gomelsky. Maybe nobody will ever reach the height of this short, smaller than any basketball player, coach. And that maybe the greatest secret of Gomelsky himself. The secret of the man who started to coach when he did not even reached 20. By the time he was 25, he was leading a strong club and was an authority for all players.
That was Gomelsky’s secret of how to recognize for one minute the future best
center player of Europe. And in that time the best future player never even played basketball in his life. He was working around bee hives. His name was Yanis Kruminsh
and he just accidentally appeared next to the bus where Gomelsky and his
team were. Gomelsky made the 218-cm Kruminsh leader of Riga's SKA and Team USSR in less time than some other coaches can teach a kid to hold the ball properly. Together with Kruminsh Gomelsky won three European Cups.
He had a tough character but he could find common language with all players - star and rookies alike. Sergey Panov, captain of today's Central Army Sports Club (CASC), where Gomelsky coached most of his life in sport, said that coach looked "like an unapproachable fortress,"but in the same was pretty down to earth in conversation. He was tough about discipline and could throw away from the court a player for even small sins. However, despite his strict discipline, the players a long time ago rewarded him with tender nick name -Papa.
He achived everything that could be achieved in Soviet basketball. And then, he achieved his main victory when he was already 60. Gomelsky took a huge risk -the risk that younger coaches with nothing to lose would not afford to take.
Several days before the Olympics in Seoul he brought back into the team Arvidas Sabonis, who missed the whole season because an Achilles injury that had not healed completely. Gomelsky risked to jeopardizing a wonderfully coordinated team. The team already did not have a space for Sabonis. However, Gomelsky went for the risk and won.
After the team lost to Yugoslavia in a start match, not many people believed that the USSR could take the Olympic gold. Gomelsky did and he made the whole team to believe that. The next match with the Yugoslavs was already in finals. By that time the team knew that they already had won gold. This reassurance came to the Soviet players after the victory over the United States in the semi-finals. Gomelsky was taking the risk exactly for this match.
Before the semi-finals Americans did not have doubts that only the Team USA plays real basketball. They thought that the three seconds that Americans gave to Soviet team in the finals of the 1972 Olympics was no more than accident, bad referees. (In that time the Soviet team was lead by another Soviet basketball genius - Vladimir Kondrashin.) Americans did not doubt for a second that they would crush the Soviets in Seoul with all the future NBA stars in the team such as David Robinson and Danny Manning. And the victory would be pay back for the loss in Munich.
They lost. The Soviet team won with the score of 82 to 76. And victory was not an accident -- the strength and advantage of the Soviet team was evident. The Americans could not forget this loss and for the next Olympics in Barcelona they persuaded the International Olympic Committee to allow them to make Team USA only from NBA strongest professionals. And then, three years after Gomelsky was elected into the American basketball Hall of Fame, no European ever was elected before.
Gomelsky achieved the unachievable. It is impossible to win that many titles like Gomelsky did. It is impossible to create that many enemies, but still tell the truth to the face of everyone and to be constantly wanted and needed until the day of his death. He could solve the most difficult problems with one phone call. He helped organized the match between Team USSR and the Atlanta Hawks. He helped his favorite Central Army Sports Club to find a big sponsor when the club found itself in dire financial straits. This sponsor made CASC into a European super-club. When Gomelsky learned from the Moscow doctors that he had 4-5 days left to live (it was last year), he continued to fight. Several days after painful treatment in Houston
Oncology Center he went out for his routine jog.
President of Russian Federation of Basketball Sergey Chernov, answering about
what was the main secret of coach Gomelsky and whether it is possible to see another figure like him anytime soon in basketball, answered: "We lost a very precious man. We are broke. There are plenty of good coaches around. But Gomelsky, with his strength, character and energy was huge. He was a genius."
"I think nobody will ever learn his secret. He took it with him," Valery Tikhonenko, the Olympic Champion, who played under Gomelsky’s lead, added.
Alexei Dospekhov
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 17, 2005
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