101 Greats of European Basketball

The symbol
of Ukrainian
basketball
Oleksandr Volkov was born in Omsk,
in present-day Russia, on March 29,
1964, but he started playing in Kiev,
the capital of Ukraine, and after
the breakup of the USSR he chose
Ukraine as his home country.
In Ukrainian, his name is spelled with an “o” at the
beginning – Oleksandr – but in many documents and
sources he is referred to as Aleksandr, Aleksander, Alexander
or Aleksandar. However, everybody knows him
by the nickname Sasha. With his surname, there are no
problems or different versions. The root of the word in
Russian and several Slavic languages is “volk”, which
translates into “wolf”. In some ways, Volkov was indeed
a wolf around the basket: tall, proud, strong, aggressive
and always with a hunger ... for a win.
Pioneer in the NBA
Sasha Volkov was one of the few European players
who, at the end of the 1980s, opened a new page in the
NBA and, in some ways, in the history of basketball in
general. When Bulgarian Georgi Glouchkov – the first
European ever in the NBA – Spaniard Fernando Martin,
Lithuanian Sarunas Marciulionis, Croatian Drazen Petrovic,
and Serbians Vlade Divac and Zarko Paspalj landed
in the NBA, they had to overcome many obstacles, most
of all a total lack of trust from American head coaches.
Until then, the NBA had just two European players
with important roles, but both had been to American
colleges: Detlef Schrempf of Germany and Rik Smits
of the Netherlands. Thanks to these players the NBA
doors are today open to many talented players.
Before making history in the NBA, Volkov earned
prestige and respect in Europe. To the international
eyes, he made his national team debut at the second
FIBA U19 Basketball World Cup in 1983 in Palma de Mallorca,
Spain. The USSR lost the title game to the United
States 82-78. Volkov scored 4 points in that final, while
his tournament average was 6.1 points. Two years later,
Volkov made his senior national team debut at the 1985
EuroBasket in Stuttgart, Germany. He was part of a
great USSR team with Arvydas Sabonis, Valdis Valters,
Marciulionis, Valeri Tikhonenko, Rimas Kurtinaitis, Aleksandar
Belostenny, Sergejus Jovaisa, Vladimir Tkatchenko,
Sergei Tarakanov and Andrey Lopatov. Almost
the same team would triumph at the 1988 Olympics in
Seoul three years later. Volkov’s average at EuroBasket
in 1985 was 7.8 points, well short of the 20 per game by
Sabonis, 16.4 by Valters or 15.5 by Kurtinaitis, but he
was a key part of a group that was crowned European
champion. Indeed, in beating Czechoslovakia 120-89 in
the final, Volkov played 29 minutes, scored 18 points
and grabbed 12 rebounds. Only three players scored
more than him: Valters (27), Kurtinaitis (24) and Sabonis
(20 plus 15 boards). But Volkov, at age 21, was
already an important player on the team, an ideal power
forward to cover the space between the backcourt
players and the towering Sabonis.
Those days were the start of great friendships among
players of several nationalities of the former USSR. The
team was formed by Lithuanians, Russians, Ukrainians
and Latvians who, not much later, would play for their
Oleksandr Volkov
101 greats of european basketball
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