101 Greats of European Basketball

The first
Lithuanian “king”
It was early April 1964. FIBA had just inaugurated
its first European Championship for Junior Men
in Naples, Italy. Only eight teams took part in
that tourney – Spain, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria, Italy, France, Poland and the USSR
– and in the title game, the Soviet team defeated
France 62-41. The first player to receive the trophy
was number 10, Modestas Paulauskas, who was
born in Kretinga, Lithuania on March 19, 1945. He
had just scored 14 points in the final that would
make the USSR the first junior champ in Europe.
It was a lot less than his average of 21.2 points –
against Yugoslavia, he had scored 36 and against
host Italy, 26 – but enough to be chosen, unofficially,
as the MVP of the tourney.
Ranko Zeravica, at the helm of the Yugoslav team,
said when he got back home that he had just seen
“a phenomenal player.” From that USSR generation,
aside from Paulauskas, there would be another
player to leave a strong mark in basketball, Zurab
Sakandelidze. But at the same tournament, there
were other interesting players and future superstars,
like Aldo Ossola and Carlo Recalcati for Italy,
Jiri Zednicek of Czechoslovakia, Bogdan Tanjevic of
Yugoslavia (even though he would become better
known as a coach), and Vicente Ramos and Juan
Martinez for Spain.
Many years later, Paulauskas revealed that it was
fate that drove him to this title. The Soviet team, for
some reason, missed the flight that was to take them
to the tournament. That plane crashed and left no survivors.
The young players avoided the tragedy and also
won the European Championship. Only a year later, at
the 1965 EuroBasket for men, Paulauskas was already
a big star. In the final, a 58-49 win over Yugoslavia, he
was the top scorer of his team with 16 points. He was
named MVP of the tournament with an average of 13.8
points. He was just 20 years old. He was a shooting
guard by size (1.94 meters) but he was able to play
point guard or, due to his great rebounding skills, small
forward. It was clear that the USSR had a true star for
the future.
Unforgettable Munich
In the next nine years, the USSR would win three
more EuroBasket golds (1967, 1969, 1971) and a
bronze medal (1973) with Paulauskas, as well as the
World Cup gold (1974, Puerto Rico) and bronze (1970,
Ljubljana) medals, an Olympic gold (1972, Munich) and
an Olympic bronze (1968, Mexico City). Paulauskas
lacks titles at the club level because he spent his entire
career, from 1962 to 1976, with Zalgiris Kaunas,
which was always behind CSKA Moscow and Spartak
St. Petersburg in those years. However, his wish was
to stay with the club he started with, and so he did. “I
had offers from CSKA and Spartak, but I didn’t want to
leave my club or my city,” he said many times. “It was
my choice and I don’t regret it.”
If he was short on titles with Zalgiris, he had no
room for more with the national team. He shined in
each and every tournament that he played. In the
final of the 1967 EuroBasket in Helsinki, against
Czechoslovakia, an 89-77 victory, he scored 19
points, even though the MVP was Jiri Zednicek, his
101 greats of european basketball
Modestas Paulauskas
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