101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
mentals, both individual defense and team defense, help
and recover. He had us get up on Sunday morning before
games for exhaustive team meetings, more than an hour,
with scouting reports for each opposing player, telling us
their tendencies, what to expect, their weak points and
strong points, how to shut them down. He was an amazing
tactician, too, and just really understood the game of
basketball. He was very adamant that we had to play the
way he wanted. If we ran a play, we had to run it the way
it was drawn. He wasn’t big on individual improvising. He
was certainly a great coach who deserves his place in the
Hall of Fame. I had good coaches in college, one of which
was Chuck Daly, a great people manager and motivator.
But in terms of tactics and the technical side of the game,
I don’t think anyone surpassed Nikolic, in my opinion.”
The start was not easy at all. Morse arrived in a city that
already had a foreign idol, Manuel Raga, the “Flying Mexican”.
The two could play together in the EuroLeague, but
not in the Italian League, which only allowed one foreigner.
So Nikolic chose Morse over Raga. In the first game, according
to Morse himself, he felt pressure and missed the
first 6 shots he attempted. The fans in the stands started
chanting Raga’s name. Things changed when he made
the next 10 shots he took. A new star was born.
Real Madrid, the eternal rival
His first season featured a great finale. First, Varese’s
third European crown arrived after a victory over
CSKA Moscow in the final, played on March 22 in Liege,
Belgium. Raga scored 25 points, Morse 16 and the team
held on to win 71-66 despite 34 points from the great
Sergei Belov. After that, Varese won the Italian Cup and
Italian League titles, too. It would become not only a
triple-crown season, but the year of four titles because
Varese also won the Intercontinental Cup in Brazil by
defeating the local team of Sirio.
While CSKA Moscow was Varese’s main opponent
in the early 1970s, starting in 1974 the number one
enemy for the Italian team would be Real Madrid. In
the 1974 European final, played on April 3 in Nantes,
France, Madrid won 84-82. Wayne Brabender led the
Whites with 22 points in a good team effort, while on
the Varese side Dino Meneghin had 25 points, Morse
24 and Raga 17. The following year, Madrid and Varese
met again for the title in Antwerp, Belgium, on April 10.
Real Madrid entered the game as the favorite, especially
because of the absence of Meneghin with a hand
injury. However, Varese won 79-66 with a huge effort
by Morse, who played 40 minutes, scored 29 points
on 12 of 19 two-point shooting and 5 of 6 free throws,
and pulled 14 rebounds. What’s more, on defense he
played as a center!
On April 1, 1976, in Geneva, Switzerland, Varese and
Madrid played their third straight European final and
the Italians won again, 81-74, behind 28 points from
Morse (13 of 19 two-point shooting in 40 minutes) and
23 by Meneghin. Varese was also in the 1977 final, but
this time the rival was Maccabi Tel Aviv. In a final full
of drama, which I witnessed live at Pionir Arena in Belgrade,
Maccabi won its first European crown 78-77. The
duo of Morse (20 points) and Meneghin (21) didn’t let
anyone down, but the Israeli team had an unstoppable
Jim Boatwright (26) and a star in the making, Miki Berkowitz
(21). Varese and Real Madrid squared off once
more in the 1978 final, on April 6 at the Olympiahalle in
Munich. Madrid won 75-67 thanks to the great duo of
Walter Szczerbiak (26) and Brabender (16), while Morse
and Meneghin had 12 and 23 points, respectively.
On April 5, 1979, Varese set a record that will be diffi-
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