101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
later topped by Mieczyslaw Mlynarski’s 90 points in
1975. With Slask, Lopatka was national club champion
twice, in 1965 and 1969, when he was also chosen MVP
of the competition for the second time.
By the time that Poland hosted EuroBasket in 1963
in Wroclaw, Lopatka was already a player of reference
who had to be on the national team. Poland started
with a respectable 64-54 loss against the USSR, but
proceeded to string together six consecutive victories
and qualify for the semifinals, where the runner-up
from the 1961 EuroBasket, Yugoslavia, was waiting. In
a game that earned a place in Polish basketball history,
the hosts won 82-73. Lopatka was his team’s top scorer,
with 18 points, followed by Likszo (13) and Janusz
Wichowski (12). The silver was assured. In the final, the
USSR won again 61-45 behind 17 points from the giant
Janis Krumins, 14 from Gennadi Volnov and 13 from
Aleksandar Petrov. Radivoj Korac was the top scorer of
the tournament with 26.4 points per game, while Lopatka
finished seventh at 15.9. His best games were 26
points against France and 14 against Czechoslovakia.
In an interview a few years ago, the principal hero of
that silver medal recalled the prize the team won: “They
had given 20 dollars to each of us. Such were the times
that our other prizes were a radio (that didn’t work), a refrigerator
(without ice) and some tickets to buy suit fabric.”
Lopatka’s second Olympic Games were in Tokyo in
1964, where he scored 9.7 points per game. In 1965, he
was for the first time Polish League player of the year
and also won the bronze medal with Poland at Euro-
Basket in Moscow, scoring 13 points per game. In 1967,
in addition to shining in the World Cup at Montevideo,
Lopatka won the European bronze at Helsinki.
In 1968, Lopatka should have continued his career
outside Poland, something that was not easy at the time
for sportsmen from countries in the Soviet bloc. Standard
Liege of Belgium wanted to sign him to form what
would have been a fearful duo with the recently-arrived
Korac. The signing deadline was August 31. Lopatka had
a promise that he could leave his country due to his merits
as a sportsman, but the passport was delivered to
him on … September 1. He didn’t blame anyone, but he
knew, as everyone did, that it was a bureaucratic means
of preventing his departure to “the capitalist world.”
Lopatka had to stay home, and in October of 1968,
he participated in his third Olympic Games, in Mexico
City, where he again was among the top performers
with 19.2 points per game. In autumn of 1969, he received
a great recognition by being chosen for the European
selection that played in Belgrade against Yugoslavia
to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Yugoslav
Basketball Federation.
In that game, after many years or watching Lopatka
on TV, I finally had the opportunity to see him in person.
It was a great European all-star team, with Paulauskas,
Volnov, Sergei Belov (who had 25 points) of CSKA Moscow,
Clifford Luyk and Emiliano Rodriguez of Real Madrid,
Francisco Nino Buscato of Joventut Badalona, Jiri
Zednicek of USK Prague and Robert Mifka of Zbrojovka
Brno, among others. They defeated Yugoslavia – with
veterans like Daneu, Vladimir Cvetkovic, Nemanja Djuric
and Trajko Rajkovic, plus young lions like Ljubodrag Simonovic,
Dragan Kapicic, Nikola Plecas and Vinko Jelovac
– by the score of 93-90.
Ahead of his time
Buscato, a great point guard from the Spanish national
team of the 1960s and ‘70s, played in that game
in Belgrade with Lopatka. But he also knew Lopatka well
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