By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
As Stankovic himself says: Well, this is the end of the season, so I wanted to do something a little more laid back and fun. I have a good collection of basketball anecdotes and I keep adding to the pile. Since I lived most of my life in the former Yugoslavia and Spain, it’s logical that most of them come from those two countries, but I would be grateful to readers who want to add some more. The only condition is not to offend anyone, that the story has some spark to it and that is in good spirits.
Proceed to read the stories!
10. PRISONERS
In the mid-19650s, Ranko Zeravica, then a young coach, is on the bench of Radnicki Belgrade. The team had to travel to Skopje, some 400 km away from Belgrade. With no money at all in the club’s account, Ranko called Ante Lambasa, then the president of the Radnicki sports society (and later president of the International Swimming Federation) and a high functionary at the Ministry of Interior. He found a ‘solution’ to the problem: the full team had to be at the station at the time the train to Skopje was leaving, and they had to go to the first car right behind the locomotive… The solution became apparent when two policemen received the team: they travelled for free as prisoners!
9. CLIMATE
At the end of his great career as a coach, Aleksandar Gomelskiy, the famous colonel of Soviet basketball, worked in Tenerife in 1988-89. On December 30, he surprised his players and his assistants by scheduling a practice for the following morning. He also asked for a camera. The payers were not happy, but they had to oblige… The practice became a walk on the beach, barely doing anything, but it was recorded as a practice. At the end of the session, Gomleksiy ordered team delegate Alejandro Martinez to “go to the post office with the tape and send it to Moscow. There’s two meters of snow and 20 degrees below zero there. I want to show my people how I am suffering the climate here!”