MIECZYSLAW LOPATKA - 101 Greats of European Basketball

Mieczyslaw
Lopatka
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The Polish legend
Who was the top scorer at the
World Cup 1967 in Montevideo,
Uruguay? A question like that in a
trivia contest would test even the
most knowledgeable experts in
world basketball history.
The answer is Mieczyslaw Lopatka, a Polish forward
considered to be the best scorer of all times in his country.
In Montevideo, he scored 177 points for an average
of 19.7 per game. His Polish national team finished fifth,
but it also had the tournament’s second-best scorer,
Bogdan Likszo, with 19.3 points per game. Finishing as
the eighth-best scorer was Radivoj Korac (at 14.6 ppg)
and 10th-best was tournament MVP Ivo Daneu (14.0
ppg) – both of Yugoslavia. In the All-Tournament Team
with Daneu were Lopatka, Luiz Claudio Menon of Brazil,
Korac and Modestas Paulauskas of the Soviet Union.
Lopatka, who was born on October 10, 1939, in
Drachowo, Poland, was a star of European basketball
in the 1960s. Poland, at the time, was one of the best
national teams and won medals at the European championships.
It’s true that Poland never took the top step
on the medals podiums, but its principal star, Lopatka,
has three European medals: silver from EuroBasket
1963 in Wroclaw, and bronzes from EuroBasket 1965 in
Moscow and EuroBasket 1967 in Helsinki.
Before becoming an outstanding basketball player,
the young Mieczyslaw practiced various sports. He
started with field hockey, continued as a soccer goalkeeper,
but abandoned that sport after giving up nine
goals in one game. Lopatka started to train as a boxer,
but when his engineer father heard about it, he had to
give that up. Then he discovered handball, where coaches
saw in him a great player, due to his size, 1.96 meters
and 95 kilos. But it was a physical education teacher,
Alexander Kwiecinski, who discovered Lopatka’s talent
for basketball.
Lopatka needed few games to become a key part
of his school team. In one game, his team scored 150
points and Lopatka had 130 by himself! Soon, in 1955,
he began to play for Kolejarz Gniezno, in a small town
near the village where he was born.
Eyes open in Rome
The best Polish clubs fixated on the young Lopatka,
who, despite not reaching 2 meters, played center
thanks to his strength and excellent rebounding. In 1958,
he was signed by Lech Poznan and two years later participated
in the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. It’s true that
Lopatka was on the Polish national team as a substitute
for the injured Wlodek Pawlak, who was hurt in practice
crashing into a teammate. But Lopatka’s average of 8
points wasn’t bad at all for the young player. Just like other
European players, Lopatka returned home from Rome
enamored with the basketball played by the American
“Dream Team” of that time, with Oscar Robertson, Jerry
West, Walt Bellamy, Jerry Lucas and others. It was another
kind of basketball the Polish had not seen before,
and it motivated Lopatka to work harder.
In 1961, Lopatka for the first time became the top
scorer in the Polish League with 582 points. He would
repeat that feat three more times: in 1963, 1966 and
1967. In the 1962-63 season, playing for Slask, he
scored 77 of his team’s 96 points in a game against AZS
Gdansk. That remained the league record until seven
years later, when Edward Jurkiewicz scored 84, to be
101 greats of european basketball
Mieczyslaw Lopatka
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Vladimir Stankovic
later topped by Mieczyslaw Mlynarski’s 90 points in
1975. With Slask, Lopatka was national club champion
twice, in 1965 and 1969, when he was also chosen MVP
of the competition for the second time.
By the time that Poland hosted EuroBasket in 1963
in Wroclaw, Lopatka was already a player of reference
who had to be on the national team. Poland started
with a respectable 64-54 loss against the USSR, but
proceeded to string together six consecutive victories
and qualify for the semifinals, where the runner-up
from the 1961 EuroBasket, Yugoslavia, was waiting. In
a game that earned a place in Polish basketball history,
the hosts won 82-73. Lopatka was his team’s top scorer,
with 18 points, followed by Likszo (13) and Janusz
Wichowski (12). The silver was assured. In the final, the
USSR won again 61-45 behind 17 points from the giant
Janis Krumins, 14 from Gennadi Volnov and 13 from
Aleksandar Petrov. Radivoj Korac was the top scorer of
the tournament with 26.4 points per game, while Lopatka
finished seventh at 15.9. His best games were 26
points against France and 14 against Czechoslovakia.
In an interview a few years ago, the principal hero of
that silver medal recalled the prize the team won: “They
had given 20 dollars to each of us. Such were the times
that our other prizes were a radio (that didn’t work), a refrigerator
(without ice) and some tickets to buy suit fabric.”
Lopatka’s second Olympic Games were in Tokyo in
1964, where he scored 9.7 points per game. In 1965, he
was for the first time Polish League player of the year
and also won the bronze medal with Poland at Euro-
Basket in Moscow, scoring 13 points per game. In 1967,
in addition to shining in the World Cup at Montevideo,
Lopatka won the European bronze at Helsinki.
In 1968, Lopatka should have continued his career
outside Poland, something that was not easy at the time
for sportsmen from countries in the Soviet bloc. Standard
Liege of Belgium wanted to sign him to form what
would have been a fearful duo with the recently-arrived
Korac. The signing deadline was August 31. Lopatka had
a promise that he could leave his country due to his merits
as a sportsman, but the passport was delivered to
him on … September 1. He didn’t blame anyone, but he
knew, as everyone did, that it was a bureaucratic means
of preventing his departure to “the capitalist world.”
Lopatka had to stay home, and in October of 1968,
he participated in his third Olympic Games, in Mexico
City, where he again was among the top performers
with 19.2 points per game. In autumn of 1969, he received
a great recognition by being chosen for the European
selection that played in Belgrade against Yugoslavia
to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Yugoslav
Basketball Federation.
In that game, after many years or watching Lopatka
on TV, I finally had the opportunity to see him in person.
It was a great European all-star team, with Paulauskas,
Volnov, Sergei Belov (who had 25 points) of CSKA Moscow,
Clifford Luyk and Emiliano Rodriguez of Real Madrid,
Francisco Nino Buscato of Joventut Badalona, Jiri
Zednicek of USK Prague and Robert Mifka of Zbrojovka
Brno, among others. They defeated Yugoslavia – with
veterans like Daneu, Vladimir Cvetkovic, Nemanja Djuric
and Trajko Rajkovic, plus young lions like Ljubodrag Simonovic,
Dragan Kapicic, Nikola Plecas and Vinko Jelovac
– by the score of 93-90.
Ahead of his time
Buscato, a great point guard from the Spanish national
team of the 1960s and ‘70s, played in that game
in Belgrade with Lopatka. But he also knew Lopatka well
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same hotel, we had the chance afterward to chat about
the games. Off the court, he was very nice, open and
well-mannered.”
At age 33, Lopatka participated in his fourth Olympic
Games in Munich in 1972. That ended his national
team career after 13 years. He finished with 236 games,
3,522 points and an average of 14.9 points per game.
When he returned from Munich, he finally received permission
to play abroad. He went to France to become
player-coach with third division Montbrison. Lopatka
returned home in 1976 and began to work as a head
coach, and did not do badly at all. In 10 seasons with
Slask Wroclaw, he was Polish League champion eight
times. His son Miroslaw was taller than his father, at
2.13 meters, but was far from being as dominant.
Eventually, Mieczyslaw Lopatka was awarded the
status of adopted son in the town of Gniezno, where
his pro career started. But no matter how you look at it,
his impact on the courts applies to the whole country.
Mieczyslaw Lopatka is a legend in Polish basketball.
Mieczyslaw Lopatka
from their battles in the EuroBaskets. He remembered
Mieczyslaw Lopatka like this:
“He was a great player, a ‘four’ height-wise, but a
‘five’ for his body and rebounding capacity,” Buscato
told me. “He played excellently facing the basket, shot
with both hands and moved well. He formed a great
tandem with Likszo, who was tougher; Lopatka was
smarter. The game of the Polish team depended on
those two players, but more on Lopatka. He had what
the great champions have – a winning character. In the
1960s, he was one of the big players in Europe, and
ahead of his time. Since our teams usually stayed in the
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