ALEXANDER GOMELSKIY_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

The basketball
general
Alexander
Gomelskiy
Entire books have been written about Alexander
Gomelskiy. The most complete
of those was a 500-pager entitled “Papa”,
written by his son Vladimir, a wellknown
Russian basketball commentator.
And I am afraid that even though it
will be quite long, this chapter won’t fit many of the
most defining characteristics of this great coach.
Let’s try.
Alexander Yakovlevich Gomelskiy was born on
January 18, 1928 in Kronstad (Russia) to a family of
Jewish descent, something that would not always
help him during his future career.
At a very young age, in 1944, he joined the Red
Army that freed first his country and, after that,
half of Europe. In Saint Petersburg – then called
Leningrad – he started playing basketball. Due to his
short stature, his natural spot was point guard. His
knowledge about basketball and sports in general
grew wider when he started studying physical education
at a civilian school, but he wrapped up his
studies at a military academy, where he graduated
as a young officer.
Soon after that, still as a player on the military
team, Gomelskiy started his career as a coach. His
first job was with the Spartak women’s team. In the
first practice, he got to meet Nina Zuravleva, also
a coach, and the woman who in the not-so-distant
future would become his mother-in-law. In the same
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Vladimir Stankovic
practice, he also met a young player, Olga Pavlova
Zuravleva, the daughter of Nina, and his future wife.
After one of the games, a player named Eudokina
Belov told him: “Sasha, in the second timeout, you
only yelled at us. Not one piece of advice. How do you
expect us to correct mistakes without instructions?”
That was a lesson he remembered for the rest of his
career: communicate and talk to the players.
His first successes came in 1951, when Gomelskiy
was double champ in Leningrad, as a player on the
military team and as the coach of Spartak. As a player
he was a candidate for the Soviet team that went
to the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952, but didn’t
make the final cut. He was told he was too short.
That same year, already married and in the military,
he was assigned to Rumbule, some 65 kilometers
from Riga, in Latvia. From there, he soon got to Riga
and started coaching ASK, a team that also belonged
to the army. The abbreviation stands for Sports Club
Army (or Army Sport Klub Riga), but normally it is just
known as ASK Riga. There, in 1953, his true career as a
coach started, and his son Vladimir was born.
Krumins, the first big man
From the very first moment, Gomelskiy knew that
to have a great team he needed some great players.
Taking a look at all his teams, he always had some
stars who could carry the team and put his ideas into
practice. The building of the great ASK Riga started
with Maigonis Valdmanis, a player with the character
of a leader. The second key man was Gunar Silnish,
and the third was Ulis Heht.
However, the key piece of the puzzle arrived as if fallen
from the sky. One day, a giant appeared at practice.
His name was Janis Krumins. His stood 2.18 meters tall
and weighed in at 145 kilograms. Right away, Gomelskiy
uttered his famous words: “We found our big man.”
The young giant was seeking a sport in which he
could exploit his natural strength. He tried it with athletics
(javelin) and wrestling, without much success.
He was slow, clumsy and didn’t have a lot of instant
talent for basketball, but Gomelskiy knew that he
had a diamond in the rough. All he needed was the
patience to polish it well. Both men spent countless
hours in the gym carrying out individual work, and the
experience with Krumins would greatly help Gomelskiy
later on with another giant and important player,
Vladimir Tkachenko.
Krumins was willing to work hard and he learned
fast, so in a short time he became a player who made
a difference. He was European basketball’s first
giant and was soon on the USSR team for the 1956
Olympics in Melbourne, where in the final he met the
future NBA star Bill Russell. Gomelskiy also travelled
to Melbourne with the national expedition, as a coach,
on a boat that sailed from Odessa. It was his first big
experience abroad.
ASK Riga won the USSR championship in 1957 and
when FIBA created the EuroLeague, the Latvian team
was the representative of the country. ASK first eliminated
Wissenschaft of East Germany and then did the
same with Legia Warsaw in the quarterfinals. In the
semis, the opponent was Real Madrid, but there was
no duel. The Spanish team, under the orders of General
Franco, rejected playing “against communists”,
so ASK Riga advanced to the final without even playing.
The other finalist would be Akademik Sofia, and
the first title game of the new competition was played
on July 6, 1958 in the football stadium of Daugava, in
front of 17,000 fans. ASK won 84-71.
Vladimir Gomelskiy recounts in his book that the
ASK players received economic rewards for the title,
and most of them could afford a Soviet-made Pobeda
car. ASK would go on to be the competition champ in
the following two editions as well, a feat that would
only be repeated by the great Jugoplastika Split
teams from 1989 to 1991. ASK also won three USSR
leagues.
A series of friendly games between the USSR and
the United States in 1958, both men and women,
opened Gomelskiy’s eyes. Even though the Americans
played with college players, he saw a different
basketball, guided by great individual technique and
ball-handling that nobody in the USSR was able to replicate.
From then on, Gomelskiy was captivated by the
style of work in the States, something that became a
full obsession after the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
Gomelskiy went to the FIBA Basketball World Cup
Alexander Gomelsky
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Vladimir Stankovic
in Chile and the FIBA EuroBasket in Istanbul, both
in 1959, as part of the coaching staff, but he did not
travel to the Rome Olympics in the same role. His
differences with head coach Stepan Spandaryan were
growing bigger every day and his criticism towards
the team’s “conservative style” also became stronger.
So Gomelskiy only went to Rome as a spectator,
and came back impressed with the USA team, which
featured all-time greats like Oscar Robertson, Jerry
West and Jerry Lucas.
Even though he appears in the record books as
the head coach for the USSR in the 1961 EuroBasket
in Belgrade, that is not true. In the scoresheets for the
game, the name of Spandaryan still appears. Also,
his son Vladimir mentions in his book it was not until
1963 that his father was named head coach of the
Soviet team. That was also the year when the family
finally moved to Moscow for good, and when Gomelskiy
took the reins at CSKA, also an army team.
In May 1963, the USSR finished third in the World
Cup in Rio de Janeiro. The team lost to Brazil and
Yugoslavia, whose bench was helmed by Aleksandar
Nikolic. A great rivalry between Gomelskiy and Nikolic,
with their national teams as well as their clubs, Ignis
Varese and CSKA, would go on for the following 15
years, until the title game at the 1978 World Cup in
Manila.
In the 1963 EuroBasket in Poland, the USSR won
the gold medal and would do the same in 1965, 1967,
1969, 1971, 1979 and 1981. It also won two silvers, in
1977 and 1987, and a bronze in 1983. Gomelskiy also
won the World Cup in 1967 and 1982, was finalist in
1978, and took third in 1963 and 1970.
After the 1964 Olympic silver in Tokyo, bronze in
Mexico 1968 and Moscow 1980, his team finally won
the gold in Seoul 1988, beating the USA team of David
Robinson, Dan Majerle, Stacey Augmon and Danny
Manning in the semifinals, and then overcoming the
Yugoslavia of Toni Kukoc, Drazen Petrovic, Vlade Divac
and others in the title game.
That was the last great USSR team, with Arvydas
Sabonis, Alexander Volkov, Sergey Tarakanov,
Sarunas Marculionis, Rimas Kurtinaitis and many
more. Gomelskiy totaled 18 medals with the USSR (9
EuroBaskets, 5 World Cups, 4 Olympics). Curiously
enough, his brother Evgeniy won the gold medal with
the women‘s team of the Russian Federation at the
1992 Barcelona Olympics, and that’s still the only
case of coaches who are brothers and Olympic champions.
With CSKA, Gomelskiy coached several finals of
the old EuroLeague, and in many places it says that he
was the European champ in Antwerp, Belgium in 1971
… but that is only half true. It is the case that Gomelskiy
was head coach for CSKA that season, but he was
not on the bench during the title game. For reasons
that were never cleared up, the Soviet authorities
held his passport, so Sergei Belov was player-coach
for that game.
Neither was Gomelskiy at the 1972 Olympics in
Munich. The rumor was that the KGB suspected that,
since he was of Jewish descent, he may emigrate to
Israel. It was a theory with a weak foundation because
Gomelskiy had dozens of chances to emigrate prior to
that and had not done so. But he was prevented from
traveling and his great local rival, Vladimir Kondrashin,
won the gold medal in a famous final against the
United States, with the last three seconds repeated
under orders from William Jones, the FIBA secretary
general, which Alexander Belov turned into a win after
having lost the first time.
Silver Fox
Gomelskiy was a very clever coach and was in total
accord with his nickname, “Silver Fox”, because of his
white hair and his smarts. He never hesitated to use
any tools at his disposal to win games: if he had to put
pressure on referees, he did it; if he had to provoke
the best player of the opponent, he was willing to do
it; if he had to steal the best player of the biggest rival,
he went ahead.
His relationship with his star players went through
different phases, from mutual adoration to the other
extreme of almost hatred. For instance, in an interview
he gave me, Sergei Belov accused Gomelskiy of
many dubious things.
It is true he had a character that was not easy to
understand, but nobody can doubt his coaching qualities.
And personally, I only had good experiences with
him. I met him at a game in 1977 in Moscow, and from
that point until his death we had a very good relationship,
especially during the initial Euroleague Basketball
years, when I was Communications Director and
he was the president at CSKA. He called me Volojda, a
typical Russian variation of my name, Vladimir.
Some approximate calculations say that Gomelskiy
coached some 2,600 games and won about 70%
of them. At the end of his career he worked in Tenerife,
Spain and Limoges, France. He was named best Russian
coach of the 20th century. As an officer, he held
the rank of colonel, but as a coach, he was no doubt
the general.
After retiring from coaching, he was president of
the USSR Basketball Federation and then president
at CSKA. Sometimes he commentated games on TV
with his son Vladimir. In 2007, he made the Naismith
Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
When CSKA won the EuroLeague title in Prague in
2006 after 35 years without the crown, they dedicated
it to him, because Gomelskiy had died on August
16, 2005 and could not witness the club’s return to
the European throne.
His legacy continues: CSKA, with which he won
16 league titles, organizes a summer tournament in
his name, while Euroleague Basketball has named its
annual Coach of the Year award the Alexander Gomelskiy
Trophy.
I hope it’s clear why.
Alexander Gomelsky
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