VLADIMIR KONDRASHIN_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

Triple-crown
winner
Vladimir
Kondrashin
There are only two players who have
won the Olympic Games, EuroLeague
and NBA championships. They
are Bill Bradley (USA in Tokyo 1964,
Simmenthal Milan in 1966, and New
York in 1970 and 1973) and Manu Ginobili
(Argentina in Athens 2004, Kinder Bologna
in 2001, and San Antonio in 2003, 2005, 2007 and
2014). Among coaches there are no such triple
champions, simply because until David Blatt there
had never been a coach who won the EuroLeague
and coached in the NBA.
But there is one coach with a very impressive
triple crown of his own: Vladimir Kondrashin.
This great Russian coach, who lived his best
years on the bench with the USSR, was an Olympic
champion at Munich in1972, EuroBasket champion
in 1971 and World Cup champion in 1974, all of
them with Team USSR. And with his lifelong club,
Spartak St. Petersburg, Kondrashin also won a
USSR championship and two Saporta Cups. He was
a much-coveted coach, loved by all because of his
personality and human qualities.
A difficult childhood
Vladimir Kondrashin was born on January 14,
1929 in Saint Petersburg. He was caught in the middle
of World War II as a 12-year-old, and his native
city was under German siege for 872 days. He went
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Vladimir Stankovic
through hell, like the rest of the city’s inhabitants:
famine, fear, cold and all kinds of suffering.
When, on January 27, 1944, the so-called “Way
of Life” was finally opened, he traveled to his
grandmother’s town, even though his father was
badly injured. After the war, Kondrashin returned
to the city where he finished his technical degree
in school. He was a plumber, but his destiny would
be in sports. He lived in a neighborhood with a bad
reputation and many of his street friends ended
up as criminals. Kondrashin was saved by sports.
First, he started boxing, then came football and ice
hockey. He learned about basketball when he had
to go to military service. There, he met Alexander
Gomelskiy, who years later would become his greatest
opponent.
Thanks to my friend and colleague from Moscow,
Bojan Soc, I can present some more details about
Kondrashin. I was fortunate enough to meet him and
talk to him a couple of times, but the information
provided by Soc completed my memory of this great
coach.
It’s been said that he was a solid player. He played
shooting guard and was a hard worker, taking at least
500 shots in every practice. In 1952, he played for
CSKA, the Red Army team. Basketball was his destiny,
and in 1953 he married Yevghenia, a Dinamo player.
One year later, their son Yuriy was born.
The decisive year in Kondrashin‘s career was 1958.
Spartak St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, won
the city championship and a qualifying tourney that
entitled the team to play in the USSR first division.
That same year, a good American team played in
the city and Kondrashin – still an active player – was
seen at the Americans’ practice, jotting down some
notes. Those were the first clues that he wanted to be
a coach.
Kondrashin put an end to his playing career in
1965 at 35 years of age and was swiftly named head
coach at Spartak, but he felt he was not yet ready for
this role. Instead, he took charge of the junior team
and stayed there for two years until coming back to
the bench of the first team in 1967. He remained there
for 30 years, sharing the job with the position of USSR
head coach for several years.
The fact that both Kondrashin and Gomelskiy
came from the same city caused some to think there
was a “Saint Petersburg school” of coaching, but the
great Sergei Belov didn’t agree.
“None of that school nonsense,” he insisted. “It
was only Kondrashin‘s passion, his vision, his hard
work. He was the first one to build the national team
away from the city. He enjoyed discovering young talents,
becoming their second father, and then taking
them to the sports institute.”
His biggest discovery, and the most important
player in his career, was Alexander ‚Sasha’ Belov. Both
would enter the history books of basketball and the
Olympic Games, but before that, Kondrashin would
have to win a battle with Belov’s parents. Belov Sr. was
having none of his son playing basketball, but Belov’s
mother supported her son’s choice. The mother prevailed
and, at age 16, Belov made his debut against
VEF Riga where the giant Jan Krumins was playing.
The kid, a lot faster, had some steals on the big man
and even blocked some of his shots.
In three seasons between 1968 and 1970, Spartak
finished fourth, third and second in the league.
Kondrashin had built a great team using his special
methods and quirks. Some say, for example, that
during trips, Kondrashin took his own water from
a fountain in the village of Sapki, where he had a
second residence. He didn’t trust the water in some
cities.
Kondrashin came close to his first title in the
1970-71 season. CSKA (coached by Gomelskiy) and
Spartak ended up with the same number of points
and had to play a tie-breaker in Tbilisi. With 5 seconds
to go, Yuri Stukin put Spartak ahead by a single
point, but Sergei Belov scored an impossible basket
to give CSKA the title.
Three more years of second places would have
to pass before Spartak finally won the league title. It
happened in the 1974-75 season, with the decisive
game played in Saint Petersburg. CSKA led in the first
half by 17 points, but Spartak came back in the second
and managed to pull off the win by a single point,
78-77. Sergei Kuznetsov scored the decisive basket
with 6 seconds to go.
Yuriy, Kondrashin‘s son, says that his father gave
even more value to this title than to the 1972 Olympics
gold in Munich. Andrej Makayev, the only player
Vladimir Kondrashin
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Vladimir Stankovic
to appear in all 36 games that season, explained Kondrashin‘s
methods of work.
“We didn’t have videos, no technical help,” Makayev
recalled. “Kondrashin used pictures from magazines
he bought when he traveled abroad. In a single
still shot we studied the possible moves of the opponents.
He insisted a lot on repetition until you became
automatic. We put some emphasis on the full-court
pass, something that gave him the Olympic gold in
Munich.”
One of Kondrashin‘s most definitive features was
defense. At Spartak it was forced upon him, because
in his team only Vladimir Arzamashkov and Makeyev
had reputations as good shooters. The rest were
fighters, hard workers who had rebounding as their
best weapon. Stats from the 1974-75 season show
that Spartak pulled seven out of every 10 possible
rebounds. Kondrashin had 14 players in the roster,
but three of them only played between one and four
games. Gomelskiy’s CSKA had two almost identical
lineups, but Spartak won its title with five or six starters
and three or four substitutes.
Two Saporta Cups
Before that league triumph, in the 1972-73 season,
Spartak won its first European title. In the old Cup
Winners’ Cup – renamed later the Saporta Cup – Kondrashin‘s
team defeated Jugoplastika Split 77-62 in
the title game played in Thessaloniki. There were no
doubts about who the champ would be. Sasha Belov
scored 18 points and Valeriy Fyodorov 25.
Two years later, in Spartak’s best season ever, the
team recaptured the same title. This time, the rival
in the final was Crvena Zvezda Belgrade in a game
played in Nantes, on March 16, 1975. It was again in
comeback fashion as Zvezda was winning 53-38 in
the 30th minute, before a 2-18 run allowed Spartak
to jump ahead and in the end win 62-63. Vladimir Arzamashkov
was the top scorer with 17 points, while
Belov netted 10.
Spartak would go on to win the national cup in
1987, but in 1988 Kondrashin left the club. Without
him, the team struggled to stay in the first division.
He returned in 1989, launching a young talent named
Evgeny Pashutin, and Spartak finished second. His
last title came in 1992, when he won the CEI league
(made up of new countries arising from the breakup
of the USSR). His last goodbye came in 1995. He died
on 23 December 1999.
Three seconds in Munich
Kondrashin and Gomelskiy were rivals not only
in the USSR league, but also with the national team.
After the 1970 FIBA Basketball World Cup in Ljubljana,
Gomelskiy was released from the national bench
and Kondrashin sat there for the first time. His debut
came at the Universiade in Turin, where the USSR
beat a good USA team in the final. The 1-3-1 zone
used by Kondrashin put the American offense in real
trouble.
Recalling that time, Sergei Belov spoke about “a
new atmosphere” in the team and also a different
style of play, regarding it as “more creative, even
though Kondrashin is a rigorous tactician.”
At the 1971 EuroBasket, the USSR won the gold
medal with two new men, Ivan Yedeshko and Aleksei
Tammiste. Sasha Belov and Mikheil Korkia also became
staples in the national team. In the semifinals, the
USSR defeated Italy 93-66 and in the title game the
victim was the world champion, Yugoslavia, 69-64.
Kondrashin was a great, systematic coach who
paid attention to detail. He was also very tactical and
very humane with his players. His wife says that he
“breathed basketball” and that sometimes he woke
up in the middle of the night to jot down some ideas
he had while sleeping.
However, his career will always be marked by the
infamous 3 seconds that had to be repeated in the
1972 Olympic final in Munich. For that competition, he
convinced Gennadi Volnov, a six-time European champion
with the USSR, to come back to be the leader the
team needed. In the final against the United States,
Kondrashin surprised observers with a starting five
including both Belovs and Alzhan Zarmuhamedov, but
then he also added Zurab Sakandelidze and Mikheil
Korkia, who were not the usual starters. He wanted a
faster, more aggressive style.
As they say, the rest is history. Due to a mistake
at the officials’ table, FIBA Secretary William Jones
ordered the last 3 seconds of the game to be repeated.
In that repetition, the USSR scored through Sasha
Belov to win the gold. Kondrashin later explained the
miracle in his own words.
“In our practices, both in Spartak and the national
team, we practiced the long passes a lot, especially
full-court passes,” he revealed. “Ivan Yedeshko had
good strength in his hands and our only chance was a
long pass to Sasha Belov. I was sure he would get the
ball, but I was expecting a foul and hoping that one
free throw would go in so we could have overtime.
However, the pass was perfect and so was Sasha’s
fake, and we managed to win the game.”
That was the end of a 63-game winning streak for
the United States in the Olympic Games, dating back
to 1936 in Berlin. At the 1974 FIBA World Cup in Puerto
Rico, Kondrashin and the USSR completed the triple
crown with a gold. Yugoslavia placed second and USA
third. And if that was not enough, he also won the
1975 Intercontinental Cup.
At the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, the USSR fell in
the semis to Yugoslavia 84-89 and could only win the
bronze medal, which was enough for Kondrashin to be
released. The communist ideology didn’t understand
second or third place. It was Kondrashin and Sasha
Belov’s last big competition.
In his last few years, Kondrashin worked with
young players at the Spartak school which bore Sasha
Belov’s name after the latter died in 1978. The two
heroes of Munich 1972 were, in some way, together
again.
Vladimir Kondrashin
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