AITO GARCIA RENESES_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

Aito Garcia
Reneses
Aito Garcia
Reneses
A manufacturer
of stars
Normally, coaches are judged by the
titles they have won. It is a fair and
legitimate criterion, and with nine
Spanish League titles, five Spanish
Cups, one Saporta Cup, two Korac
Cups, one EuroCup and one FIBA
Cup, Alejandro ‘Aito’ Garcia Reneses stands with
the best.
However, Reneses is still haunted by the fact that he
never managed to win a EuroLeague title, despite having
been to six Final Fours. That’s also a fact that cannot
be denied. But instead of casting judgement at first
sight, let’s take a look at the great 56-year (and counting)
career of a man completely dedicated to basketball.
Since Aito spent a great deal of his coaching career
with FC Barcelona and Joventut Badalona, many people
link him only to Catalonia, but he was actually born
in Madrid on December 20, 1946, and raised in the
Spanish capital. He was among the countless products
of the “eternal factory” for talent at the Ramiro de
Maeztu school, the home of Estudiantes. He started
playing at age 13 and soon reached the first team as a
point guard, also getting to the junior national team. In
a later interview, Aito defined himself as a “bad shooter,
slow, but smart when it came to choosing options. I
was good at penetrating and assists, too.”
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Moving into coaching
Despite being “slow and a bad shooter” – some-
31 MASTERMINDS of EUROPEAN BASKETBALL
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Vladimir Stankovic
thing I presume is exaggerated self-criticism – after
five years at Estudiantes, Aito signed with FC
Barcelona. He would go on to be a solid player for
five more seasons there, but at 27 years of age he
decided to put an end to his playing career. That
self-description as “smart when it came to choosing
options” also came into play when he discovered
his coaching gene. As a playmaker, he was
in the position of making coaches’ ideas happen,
but he always had something to add through his
talent. He was always curious and open to listening,
reading, learning and following modern trends.
As a coach, Aito was methodical and an enemy of
improvisation. Every person who has been able to
talk to him about basketball, even if just once, has
been able to corroborate his deep knowledge of
the game.
His coaching career started in the 1972-73 season,
at the humble club CB Esparreguera, while he
was still playing for Barcelona. His first professional
job, between 1973 and 1983, was with Cercle Catolic
Badalona, best known as Cotonificio. Between 1976
and 1980 he was also the national coach for younger
categories. In the 1979 FIBA Cadet European Championship
in Damascus, Spain won the bronze medal
with Andres Jimenez and Fernando Martin.
His next step was coaching Joventut from 1983
to 1985, and from there he didn’t have to take a long
trip to switch teams and start coaching FC Barcelona.
Aito coached Barca for five seasons and then
became general manager for two seasons, between
1990 and 1992. However, he would soon return to
the sidelines, even though to avoid attending press
conferences due to conflicts with the press, he “resigned”
and let Quim Costa serve as head coach,
while Aito was considered assistant coach. Of
course, he was in fact the head coach on that bench.
Aito was back on the job in 1993 and remained there
until 2001.
In 2003, he went back to Badalona to coach Joventut
again and stayed there until 2008. After that,
he spent three years in Malaga coaching Unicaja,
two more with Baloncesto Sevilla (2012 to 2014),
before moving to Herbalife Gran Canaria Las Palmas,
and then heading to Germany to take over at
ALBA Berlin in 2017.
All nine of his Spanish championships came at
Barca, with whom he also won four Spanish Cups,
the 1986 Saporta Cup and the Korac Cup in 1987
and 1999. He also won one Spanish Cup with Joventut,
as well as the 2008 EuroCup and the 2006 FIBA
Cup. If that doesn’t sound like enough, in the summer
of 2008 Aito also took a temporary job as head
coach of the Spanish national team for the Beijing
Olympics and led the squad to a silver medal after
an unforgettable final that saw Team USA break
some serious sweat to win 118-107.
Titles and drama in Paris
It’s quite funny that the first title Aito ever won
was an international competition, the Saporta Cup
in 1986. In his first season with Barca, Aito took the
team to the title game. In the quarterfinals group,
Barcelona came out on top against teams like Scavolini
and Jugoplastika. In the semifinals, the Catalan
team defeated CSKA Moscow and then met Scavolini
again in the title game, to be played in Caserta on
March 18. Of course, most of the 7,000 fans were
Scavolini supporters, but despite playing on the
road, Barcelona won with authority, 101-86.
Eight players stepped on the court that day and
all of them scored: Chicho Sibilio and Mark Smith led
Barcelona with 22 points each; Juan Antonio “Epi”
San Epifanio added 20; Greg Wiltjer had 14, Nacho
Solozabal 10, Julian Ortiz and Lagarto de la Cruz 4
each, and Arturo Seara 2. Scavolini also had a good
team with Zam Fredrick (32 points), Mike Sylvester,
Walter Magnifico, Domenico Zampolini, Ario Costa
and Andrea Gracis, but Barca was better at everything
that night.
The fact that all the Barcelona players scored was
characteristic of Aito’s style: he was one of the first
coaches to break a unwritten rule that only the best
five or six players had to play. Aito favored player rotations
in order to get the most energy from each player.
He was loyal to that creed throughout his career,
Aito Garcia Reneses
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Vladimir Stankovic
despite catching flak from the press for sending a hot
player to the bench more than once. Those substitutions
helped his teams always keep their strength.
Aito‘s second European title arrived exactly one
year later, on March 18, 1987 in the Korac Cup. Barca
defeated Limoges twice: at home 106-85 (behind 28
points by Wallace Bryant and 24 by Epi) and 86-97 in
France with 29 from Epi and 15 from Jimenez. A second
Korac Cup arrived in 1999 against Estudiantes
after a great comeback in the second game. In Madrid,
Estudiantes had won 93-77, but on March 31 in Barcelona,
the hosts won 97-70 with points being shared by
Sasa Djordjevic and Efthimios Rentzias (18 each), Xavi
Fernandez (17), Derrick Alston (14), Milan Gurovic (13),
Roger Esteller (12) and Nacho Rodriguez (5).
It’s a no-brainer that winning titles with Barcelona
was easier than when master Aito returned to Joventut
Badalona. In the 2007-08 season, he led the team
to the EuroCup title after coming out on top at the Final
Eight in Turin. In the quarterfinals, “La Penya” – Joventut’s
nickname – defeated Pamesa Valencia 77-67.
The next victim in the semis was Galatasaray Istanbul,
90-83. The title game was against another Spanish
team, Akasvayu Girona, with Marc Gasol, Victor Sada,
Fernando San Emeterio and Ariel McDonald, but Joventut
won 79-54 and, with the title, also earned the
right to play in the EuroLeague the following season.
Rudy Fernandez was named MVP of the tournament
and 18-year-old star Ricky Rubio was also one of the
most important players for the team. In fact, Rubio
had already become the youngest player to ever play
in the Spanish League at 14 years, 11 months and 24
days old against Granada on October 10, 2005. All
credit goes to Aito, who saw the talent and potential
in this young kid.
Of the six shots at the biggest European title that
Aito had, the one remembered the most by the fans
and Aito himself came in Paris in 1996, against Panathinaikos
Athens in the final. It would end up being the
most controversial final ever in European basketball.
With 4.9 seconds to go, Panathinaikos was ahead
by 67-66 when Jose Montero made a steal and drove
to the opposing basket. Stojan Vrankovic, the Greens’
2.17-meter center, put his “seven-mile steps” to work
and tried what seemed impossible: catching a much
faster Montero and stopping him despite a two-meter
head start. The rest, as they say, is history. Montero
reached the hoop first but instead of slamming the
ball or dropping a layup, he decided to use the backboard,
which allowed Vrankovic to get there in time to
block the shot (illegally) and deny the basket. Chaos
ensued and would go on until 4 in the morning, when
FIBA rejected Barcelona’s appeal. But that’s another
story. The block was indeed illegal, but so was the
whole Montero run to the basket because the clock
was stopped, so that play, in fact “never existed.” Why
the clock did not work was never explained. Whatever
the reason, Aito and Barcelona missed another shot
at the title.
Encouragement for youngsters
If those who don’t like Aito normally look at the six
Final Fours that Barcelona could not win with him on
the bench, they also must admit something that cannot
be denied: nobody ever launched so many young
talents who would eventually become superstars. Off
the top of my head (at the risk of forgetting someone)
here’s a list of names to form a true dream team: Andres
Jimenez, Jordi Villacampa, Joaquim Costa, Jose
Montero, Rafa Jofresa, Pau Gasol, Juan Carlos Navar-
ro, Rudy Fernandez, Ricky Rubio, Pau Ribas, Tomas
Satoransky and Kristaps Porzingis.
In fact, I was a direct witness of Aito’s predictions
about Porzingis when the kid was just a raw talent in
Seville. In one of our conversations, he explained to
me that his eye for young talent is something that he
“just has.” He also argued that youngsters and veterans
must be treated the same, and he allows the best
players to play, though he doesn’t like that referees
have an easier time calling violations on young players
than on veterans.
Aito also told me that he doesn’t have any sets of
rules. His philosophy could be summarized in a couple
of sentences:
- The coach must teach his players technique, tactics
and behavior.
- The coach wins and loses with his teams. Everybody
is in the same boat.
Aito is a quiet man who always keeps his temper
under control. I can hardly remember any technical
foul called against him for protesting referees’ decisions.
He is a man who measures his words, even
though sometimes you have to read between the
lines to discover the message.
He is happy if he manages to make an average
player better, say going from a 6 to an 8. “And many
players have done that,” said the coach who has been
on the job for nearly half a century.
Official stats note that since the 1983-84 season,
when he made his Spanish league debut with Joventut,
he has coached 1,077 games in that competition
alone. In fact, it’s some 40 more because only three
are counted from that 1992-93 season with his fake
“resignation”. And adding up all his games in all competitions,
Aito’s experience goes way beyond 2,000
games! That’s what I call dedicating one’s life to basketball.
In fact, Aito is still going strong. In the last few
years he has led Gran Canaria to the EuroCup Finals
and has taken ALBA – his first team outside Spain – to
the finals of the same competition, perhaps with a
bunch of level 6 players whom he helped to become
8s or even 9s.
And that’s Aito: a true star manufacturer.
Aito Garcia Reneses
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