101 Greats of European Basketball

The legend
of Varese
In modern European basketball, there are few cases
of foreign players who stay with the same team
for more than two or three seasons. However, 30
or 40 years ago, it wasn’t that unusual to see players
wearing the same jersey for five or even more
years. One of the cases that stood out most was
that of Robert “Bob” Morse, the great American scorer
who rejected an NBA career – he was drafted by the
Buffalo Braves – to chase glory in Europe. Morse was
born on January 4, 1951, near Philadelphia and, after
standing out in high school, the next logical step for
him was entering the University of Pennsylvania.
With a height of 2.03 meters, Morse was a power
forward with the shooting touch of a small forward
and the rebounding skills of a classic center. He was a
natural scorer, with a steady hand from all distances.
His last three years in college with the Penn Quakers,
from 1969 to 1972, are still considered the best in the
long history of the school, which dates back to its first
game against Yale on March 20, 1897. It is a fact that
the only time that Penn reached the NCAA Final Four
was in 1979 in Salt Lake City, where they were stopped
by the Michigan State squad led by the legendary Magic
Johnson. But the longest period of steady quality coincided
with the Morse’s time on the team. There were
also good players like Dave Wohl, Steve Bilsky and
Corky Calhoun, but the leader was Bob Morse. He finished
his college days with 1,381 points after being the
team’s top scorer for three seasons. The team’s record
in those years was 25-2 (1969-70), 28-1 (1970-71) and
25-3 (1971-72).
While everyone expected a good NBA career out
of Morse, he surprised many with the decision to play
in Europe. He was going to Varese, a place most of his
teammates would have a hard time locating on a map
of Italy. But this small town had a great basketball team,
which was already a double European champ (1970,
1972) and had a great coach, Aleksandar Nikolic, who
insisted on his signing. As a result, Morse became the
key man on the team in his new European adventure.
Aca Nikolic’s influence
On the occasion of the celebration of 50 Years of European
Competitions at the 2008 EuroLeague Final Four
in Madrid, Morse, who was elected by a board of experts
among the 35 best players during that period, had this
to say about coach Nikolic in a EuroLeague.net interview:
“I got to know the city of Varese, the team members
and our coach, Aleksandar Nikolic, especially. He was
impressed enough to sign me to a two-year contract.
My real education came when I first arrived for training
camp. We didn’t go to Varese, but instead to a bunch
of exhibition tournament games, which were mostly
outdoors at the time, 10 or 11 on the road at different
resorts around Italy. I was impressed by Nikolic’s
coaching. He was really strong on physical conditioning
and had a special coach for that, which at the time was
unusual. I think that was the key for me that first season,
in which we won the EuroLeague, the International
Cup in Brazil, as well as the Italian League and Italian
Cup, and I won the Italian League scoring title.”
Morse continued: Nikolic was also big on shooting,
which was my forte already. But he did some things that
I had never experienced in the U.S. He was big on funda-
101 greats of european basketball
Bob Morse
M