101 Greats of European Basketball

The 87-point man
Forum Valladolid was never one of the big
clubs in Spain. It never won any titles, but
it has the honor of having had on its roster
three of the greatest players in European
basketball: Arvydas Sabonis, Oscar Schmidt
and Carlton Myers. The “Lithuanian Tzar”
and the “Brazilian Holy Hand” were perhaps better
known than the Italian shooter with Jamaican origins,
but he was nearly as prolific. Carlton Ettore Francesco
Myers was born on March 30, 1971, in London, where
his parents worked. When he was 10 years old, the
family moved to Rimini, a small Italian city on the
Adriatic coast where, until he turned 17, nobody saw
Carlton as a future basketball star.
Trading in the flute
Carlton’s father was a musician, a saxophonist, and it
was logical that his son would follow his footsteps, even
though he chose the flute. In between school and music
lessons, young Myers played basketball. But before turning
17, it was only a hobby. Little by little, however, basketball
started taking over and ended up defeating the flute.
Carlton Myers dropped music school, convinced that his
future was in basketball. From 1988 to 1992 he played in
the Italian second division for Mar Rimini. He started out
scoring 2.5 points in the 1988-89 season, and in the next
one, he improved to 5.9 points. His true explosion came
in 1991-92, when he averaged 26.8 points! After shining
in the Italian second division, he signed for Scavolini Pesaro
as the great prospect of Italian basketball. During his
first season, in 39 games, he averaged 16.8 points while
shooting 33.5% from the arc, his biggest weapon in the
decade that was about to follow.
In a story published in Spanish newspaper Mundo
Deportivo during the holiday break of 1992, his Scavolini
teammate Haywoode Workman explained Scavolini’s
playing system: “It’s pretty simple. It’s about giving
the ball to Carlton so that he decides what to do with it
at the right time.”
That’s the same recipe used by all coaches who
were fortunate enough to have Myers on their team.
Standing at 1.92 meters, he was a natural-born shooting
guard, but his talent had much more in store. His
shot, especially from downtown, was his lethal weapon,
but many times he was the best passer or rebounder
on his team, too.
Index rating 94!
During his second season with Scavolini, Myers’
scoring average was already 25.1 points and he was
shooting 40.7% on threes. For the 1994-95 season, he
went back to Rimini, in the second division, where he
scored 29.6 points per game. On January 26, 1995, he
etched his name in the history books of Italian and European
basketball by scoring 87 points against Udine,
the most ever at the Italian professional level. His previous
personal high was 51 points with Scavolini in the
first division. Against Udine, Myers had an incredible
shooting night: 14 of 22 two-pointers, 9 of 19 threes
and 32 of 35 free throws. His final index rating was 94!
As far as I know, nobody in the modern era of European
basketball has reached those numbers, even though
Myers did it in the Italian second division. Nikola Mirotic
of Real Madrid had an index rating of 84 at the Euroleague
Basketball ADIDAS NEXT GENERATION TOURNA-
MENT Ciutat de L’Hospitalet tournament in 2008.
101 greats of european basketball
Carlton Myers
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