101 Greats of European Basketball

Olympiacos won 73-58 led by an excellent David Rivers,
who scored 26 points.
Gone and back
Another failed attempt at the EuroLeague forced a
new coaching change in Barcelona, with Manel Comas
arriving. The club made a bold move and let Karnisovas
go. The Lithuanian chose Olympiacos. He played the
McDonald’s Open with the Reds in Paris and scored
19 points (10 of 10 free throws) plus 3 boards and 4
assists against the Chicago Bulls of Michael Jordan (27
points). That was the proof that he had a place in the
NBA, but his ambition to play there had faded. Karnisovas’
third attempt at the European crown was not the
charm either as Olympiacos fell in the quarterfinals
to Partizan and was out of the Barcelona Final Four in
1998. Karnisovas was the best scorer on the team with
17.1 points plus 5.2 rebounds, but he didn’t win any
titles that season.
At the 1998 World Cup in Athens, Lithuania finished
seventh. Karnisovas scored 17.1 points and was the
third-best scorer of the tournament behind Alberto
Herreros (Spain) with 17.9 and Mohamed Acha (Nigeria)
with 17.5. Karnisovas also added 5 rebounds per game.
His next go at the EuroLeague was in Italy with Fortitudo,
but he didn’t win it the next two seasons either. In
the Munich in 1999, he played his third Final Four but his
team fell in the semis against local archrival, Virtus Bologna,
62-57. In 1999-2000, Fortitudo lost its quarterfinal
series with Maccabi Tel Aviv 2-1 and didn’t reach the Final
Four. The team did, however, win the Italian League.
At the turn of the century, Karnisovas decided to
go back to Barcelona, something not very usual in the
history of the club. In the last 20 years, only Zoran
Savic, Juan Carlos Navarro and Sarunas Jasikevicius,
apart from Karnisovas, have managed to play two different
stints at the club. His last two attempts to win
the EuroLeague were with Barcelona, but he was not
successful back there either. In 2000-01, Barcelona
stepped down to Benetton Treviso in the eighth-finals,
2-0. The following season, the team finished the Top 16
with a 4-2 record, just like Benetton, but with a worse
point differential, so it didn’t make the Final Four again.
In those two seasons, Karnisovas showed a solid level
in the EuroLeague, 13.9 points, with similar numbers
in the Spanish League, where against Cantabria Lobos
he established his personal high of 40 points scored.
In 2001, he won the Spanish King’s Cup and again the
league in 2002, but at 31 years old, he decided to retire.
That was the end of a great career with many national
titles and several medals with the national team, but
without a EuroLeague title. He was a king without a
crown, but his name stayed in conversations reserved
only for the greats.
I was fortunate to follow his games during his four
seasons in Barcelona, the Olympics in Barcelona and
Atlanta, the EuroBaskets of 1995 and 1999, and the
1998 World Cup. That was more than enough to confirm
that Karnisovas was a great player, especially a
great shooter. He was able to run the fastbreak but also
to grab many rebounds. He was a smart player, complete
and always an example of fair play.
His former coach, Aito, comments:
“If I had to find a flaw in him, it would have been his
overall understanding of the game. That’s why it surprised
me later that he worked as a scout for the NBA
and how well he did it. Nowadays, he shows magnificent
criteria and reading of players, and he has a good analysis
of team play. All of which means that he has kept
maturing personally and gaining more knowledge.”
101 greats of european basketball
Arturas Karnisovas
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