SAULIUS STOMBERGAS - 101 Greats of European Basketball

Saulius
Stombergas
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The man who made
9 of 9 triples
What do Arvydas Macijauskas,
Saulius Stombergas, Tomas Delininkaitis,
Arturas Karnisovas
and Eurelijus Zukauskas all have
in common? Sounds like an easy
question, right? Any mediocre
basketball connoisseur would say that they are all
Lithuanian. That is correct, but they have one more
thing in common: all of them were born in the town of
Klaipeda, Lithuania’s most important port.
When we talk about Lithuanian basketball, Kaunas
and Vilnius are first in line, but Klaipeda, a town of
180,000 inhabitants on the coast of the Baltic Sea, is
also very important for basketball in that country. Saulius
Stombergas, one of those five great players from
Klaipeda, was born on December 14, 1973, but he spent
most of his career away from his hometown. As a great
young talent, he landed early in Kaunas to sign with Zalgiris
during the 1992-93 season. However, even though
he stayed in Kaunas, he spent the first three seasons
there playing with Atletas. By 1995, he had made his
debut with the national team at the EuroBasket in Athens.
He was part of a great team with some of his idols:
Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Marculionis, Rimas Kurtinaitis,
Valdemaras Chomicius and Karnisovas. Stombergas
made a symbolic contribution, 2.9 points per game,
but he came back with the first important medal of his
career, a silver one after losing the final to Yugoslavia,
96-90. In 14 minutes in the final, he scored 2 points on
free throws, but he pulled down 6 rebounds, 4 of them
on offense. A year later, at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta,
he won the bronze medal.
After three years at Atletas, Stombergas made what
was then a bold career move to play for Vostok Shanghai
in China, becoming an immediate sensation in the
national league there, and enough to impress a young
local player named Yao Ming for a long time afterward.
“The year before I started my career, actually, we had
a Lithuanian player, Saulius Stombergas, in the CBA,”
Yao told Euroleague.net in an interview back in 2007. “I
think that until now he remains one of the best players
to come from Europe or even America to play in China –
the best one, really, in CBA history.”
From China, Stombergas returned to Europe to
play at the 1997 EuroBasket, where Lithuania fell in the
quarterfinals, again against Yugoslavia (75-60). But by
then Stombergas was already a key player, averaging
10.8 points, behind Karnisovas (14.2) and Sabonis
(13.3). Having risen to star status and become known
as a three-pointer specialist, he returned to Zalgiris in
1997.
Two Euro trophies in two years
Going back to Zalgiris would be the best decision of
his career. On April 14, 1998, Stombergas won his first
trophy at the club level. In the title game of the Saporta
Cup, played at the legendary Pionir Arena in Belgrade,
Zalgiris defeated Olimpia Milano 82-67. The MVP of the
game, you ask? Well, after he scored 35 points, it was
only fair that the award was given to Stombergas. It was
his night. He made 7 of 8 two-pointers, 1 of 2 threes
and 18 of 23 free throws. He also had 2 rebounds and
5 assists. A star was born. By the end of the season,
Zalgiris won the Lithuanian league and began preparing
101 greats of european basketball
Saulius Stombergas
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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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It’s worth a look on Youtube for a video of that game. It
didn’t matter whether he was shooting from the right
or left wings, the corner or the top of the arc. His coach
that season, Dusko Ivanovic, remembered Stombergas
this way:
“Of course, his main weapon was his shot, but as
a shooter, he was smart, disciplined and with a heavy
dose of self-control. He shot with feeling, he knew that
if it was his day, like that night in Athens, he was able to
shoot non-stop. He was smart, a good defender, could
go for the rebounds and could also score penetrating.
Yes, he was a great player.”
In the EuroLeague final, the first and only one ever
decided in a best-of-five playoff series, Kinder defeated
Tau Ceramica by 3-2. Stombergas could not repeat the
title won with Zalgiris in 1999, but he made the history
books by being in the first repeat game ever of the competition
and by scoring 9 of 9 threes, still the record in
the competition.
The following season Stombergas would move to
Efes Pilsen, with which he won the Turkish League and
national cup, but for 2002-03 he was back to Zalgiris.
One year later he moved to Russia to play with UNICS
Kazan.
His next memorable highlight was winning the gold
medal at the 2003 EuroBasket in Sweden. It was the first
gold for Lithuania since 1939! A great tourney had its
best moment in the final against Spain, which featured
Pau Gasol, Juan Carlos Navarro, Felipe Reyes, Alberto
Herreros, Jorge Garbajosa and Jose Manuel Calderon.
Lithuania won 93-84 with 21 points by Macijauskas, 10
by Sarunas Jasikevicius, 18 by Zukauskas, and 9 by Ramunas
Siskauskas. Stombergas was the captain, and
now, a double European champion, with his club and
his national team.
In the summer of 2004, between UNICS and a new
stint in Turkey, this time with Ulker, Stombergas took
part in the Athens Olympics. On August 21, Lithuania
beat the United States 94-90 behind a great Sarunas
Jasikevicius (28 points) but also with a great Stombergas,
who scored 16 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. I
saw the game live and I remember the offensive festival
put on by the Lithuanian talents. Stombergas finished
the tournament with 12.3 points per game and left the
national team after 11 years with 97 games played and
1,036 points scored.
After a two-year hiatus, he played again with humble
Naglis Adakris of Lithuania, but in 2008 he retired
for good. One of the best shooters of the modern era
called it a career. With two European trophies, a Euro-
Basket gold medal plus two Olympic medals and another
EuroBasket silver, Stombergas has six important
titles and many good memories. Just as we do, after
having been able to enjoy his play – and most of all, his
sensational shot – for many years.
101 greats of european basketball
Saulius Stombergas
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