101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
with ambition for the EuroLeague the following campaign.
In the group phase, Zalgiris won with authority,
compiling an 8-2 record to rule the group above Fenerbahce,
Pau-Orthez, Tau Ceramica, Varese and Avtodor.
In the eighth-finals and quarterfinals, Zalgiris defeated
Turkish teams Ulker and Efes Pilsen, respectively. Then
it was time for the Final Four in Munich, Germany, with
the other three teams being Olympiacos, Kinder Bologna
and Fortitudo Bologna. Each bench featured a basketball
master: Dusan Ivkovic for Olympiacos, Ettore
Messina for Kinder, Petar Skansi for Fortitudo and Jonas
Kazlauskas for Zalgiris, although the latter was not yet
so well-known at the time. The rosters of the four teams
were full of stars, of course. The defending champion,
Kinder, had the likes of Predrag Danilovic, Alessandro
Abbio, Radoslav Nesterovic, Hugo Sconochini, Augusto
Binelli and Antoine Rigaudeau. Olympiacos had Arijan
Komazec, Anthony Goldwire, Panagiotis Fasoulas, Milan
Tomic, Johnny Rogers, Fabricio Oberto and Dragan
Tarlac. For Fortitudo, Marko Jaric, Gregor Fucka, Vinny
Del Negro, Carlton Myers, Dan Gay and Roberto Chiacig.
And Zalgiris had Tyus Edney, Eurelijus Zukauskas,
Kestutis Sestokas, Dainius Adomaitis, Anthony Bowie,
George Zidek and, of course, Saulius Stombergas. A
stellar Final Four if you ask me.
In the semifinal, played on April 20, Zalgiris eliminated
Olympiacos 81-71 after great collective play, with 10
players scoring. Kinder was waiting in the title game,
but Zalgiris also defeated the defending champs by the
score of 82-74 after leading 45-30 at the break. Anthony
Bowie was the top scorer with 17 points, followed
by Tyus Edney (13), Stombergas and Zidek (12 apiece).
For the Italian team, the 27 points of Antoine Rigaudeau
were useless because the rest of his teammates, especially
Danilovic (7 points with 1 of 5 triples), didn’t have
a good day. So, 13 years after the Sabonis generation
lost the final against Cibona in Budapest, Zalgiris won
the first EuroLeague crown for Lithuania.
Unbelievable night in Athens
For Stombergas, the triumph in Munich was the culmination
of that stint with Zalgiris. The time had come to
leave the country. His first stop would be Bologna, with
Kinder. It was a blank season for him, losing the final of
the Italian Cup, but he found some consolation at the
2000 Olympics in Sydney. Lithuania lost by just 85-83 in
the semifinals against a powerful USA team with Jason
Kidd, Alonzo Mourning, Kevin Garnett and Gary Payton,
but Stombergas took home a bronze medal thanks to an
89-71 win over Australia in the third-place game.
After that, Stombergas joined Tau Ceramica of
Spain, where he played the first season of the new Euro-
League. Stombergas and his club were protagonists of
two nights that went into the history books. In the first
semifinals game against AEK Athens, the Greek team
won 75-74 with a basket that fell after the buzzer, and
the EuroLeague, for the first time in the history of the
competition, decided to invalidate the result. The game
was replayed and Tau won 70-67 with only 1 point by
Stombergas. Only 5 days later, on the same stage at
OAKA in Athens, the Lithuanian forward played what
was probably the best game of his career. Tau won 90-
65 with 39 points by Stombergas. His shooting was
nearly perfect that night: 4 of 4 twos, 9 of 9 three-pointers
and 3 of 5 free throws! Unbelievable and unrepeatable.
I had seen Sasha Djordjevic also score 9 threes in
that very same arena in the 1995 EuroBasket final, but
he needed 12 attempts.
Stombergas’s game that night was like a symphony.
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