101 Greats of European Basketball

A doctor among
the baskets
If someone in a country with a long basketball
tradition like Spain’s is known as the best point
guard of all time and its most-decorated player,
he certainly deserves a guaranteed spot among
the legends. All of those accolades apply to Juan
Antonio Corbalan, who retired in 1991 wearing the
jersey of Valladolid, putting an end to a brilliant career.
In his last active season, playing at 36 years old,
he appeared in 15 games and averaged 6.5 points and
2.8 assists in 25 minutes per game.
The strange thing is that Corbalan returned to playing
again after a two-year break. He had already retired
after 17 years on the court – from 1971 to 1988 – with
his life-long club, Real Madrid. But then came an interesting
call from Gonzalo Gonzalo, the president of the
club in Valladolid, the team that had signed Arvydas
Sabonis. The Lithuanian giant had suffered injuries but
wanted to show, at 27 years old, that he still had some
good things to offer to basketball. Sabonis was having
a hard time adapting to this new chapter in his life. On
the basketball court, he needed a great and – more to
the point – experienced point guard by his side. The idea
of Gonzalo to convince Corbalan to come out of retirement
proved the perfect solution.
Thus ended the great career of Corbalan, the best
Spanish point guard of all time. But what about the
beginnings of this man born in Madrid on August 3,
1954? In the book “The King of Europe,” by Luis Miguel
Gonzalez Lopez, dedicated to the basketball section
of Real Madrid, Corbalan himself talked, as a junior,
about his future: “I am not a future genius of basketball.
Those are things that have to be proven by facts, and
I still haven’t even started. The only thing on my mind
now is playing. I hear people talking about me and they
say that I took a big step forward, but I still have many
things to do.”
Indeed, besides his game, if anything was characteristic
of Corbalan, it was his modesty. He was an exemplary
sportsman in everything: his behavior on and off
the court, his fair play, and his respect for teammates,
opponents and referees. On top of that, Corbalan was
a brilliant student of medicine, a very difficult degree
to obtain for an elite sportsman. But he got his MD on
both fronts: in school and on the court. In fact, after retiring
he became a prestigious cardiologist with many
ideas that linked his two passions: sports and health.
Corbalan founded and directs the La Salle Institute
of Functional Rehabilitation and Applied Science to
Sports, which is located in the Aravaca district of Madrid.
However, we are here to talk about Corbalan the
basketball player.
Free throws in Nantes
When Real Madrid reached the title game of the Euro-
League in Nantes in 1973-74, Corbalan already had two
Spanish League titles from the two previous seasons,
even though his contribution to the team, due to his age,
was not yet major. But little by little he was getting more
playing time and more confidence from his coach, Lolo
Sainz. For instance, on the way to the final against Sandro
Gamba’s Ignis Varese, Corbalan scored 23 points
against Heidelberg of Germany even though he went
scoreless against Radnicki and Berck. But then came the
final against Varese, the archrival of Real Madrid in that
101 greats of european basketball
Juan Antonio Corbalan
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