LOLO SAINZ_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

An ‘African’ multichamp
in Europe
Lolo
Sainz
Due to life circumstances, Manuel
Sainz Marquez – widely known as
“Lolo” – was born in Tetuan, Morocco,
on August 28, 1940, but he was
raised in Madrid, Spain, and lived
there ever since. First, he was a
very good player on the great Real Madrid teams
that dominated Europe in the 1960s, and later he
coached his lifelong club, though he also subsequently
showed his skills on the Joventut Badalona
and Spanish national team benches.
When all his successes are counted, Lolo is one
of just three people to have won the top continental
titles as both a player and coach, and the only
one to have done so in both capacities more than
once.
Curiously, the first to do so, Armenak Alachachian
of CSKA Moscow, who won twice as a player
and once as a coach, was also born in Africa – Alexandria,
Egypt, to be exact. The third such winner,
Svetislav Pesic, lifted EuroLeague titles one time
each as a player and a coach. Lolo did so four times
as a player and twice as a coach. All told, he was a
continental champion more often than all but two
people: Zeljko Obradovic, who has won nine times
as a coach; and Dino Meneghin, who did so seven
times as a player.
During his playing days, Lolo appeared in the
finals of the former EuroLeague on five occasions.
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Vladimir Stankovic
After losing his first in 1963 against CSKA Moscow, he
won the next four. In 1964 against Spartak Brno, after
Madrid lost the first leg of their two-game series, 99-
110, he scored 8 points in the second leg, an 84-64
victory that was good for the trophy. The next season,
against CSKA, he scored 9 in an 81-88 loss in Moscow
and another 9 in the second leg, a 76-62 victory in
Madrid. Sainz was scoreless in the 1967 final against
Olimpia Milano, a 91-83 victory, and scored 6 points
in the 1968 final in Lyon against Spartak Brno, which
Madrid won 98-95.
Pedro Ferrandiz, the great Real Madrid coach,
considered Sainz a gift and started grooming him as
his heir. Those were huge shoes to fill, but Lolo was
willing to listen, learn and wait for his moment. He
started with the Real Madrid youth teams from 1969
to 1971, and in 1971-72 he already became Ferrandiz’s
assistant with the senior team. In 1972-73 he
moved to Vallhermoso Madrid for his first job as a
head coach, but by the following season he was back
with Los Blancos to assist Ferrandiz for two more
seasons.
Lolo himself readily recognizes Ferrandiz as the
most influential person in his coaching career, but he
also revealed a detail that was not widely known until
recently.
“In 1973, or maybe it was 1974, I spent two months
in the United States at the University of Southern
California. My eyes were opened there and I started
looking at basketball another way,” Lolo told me a
couple of years ago.
Among other European coaches who had an influence
on him, he cites Dan Peterson and Aleksandar
Nikolic, whom he calls “the revolutionary”.
Lolo’s true coaching career started in the summer
of 1975 when, well prepared at the age of 35,
he stepped up to the Real Madrid first team. He
would stay there for 14 years. During this period,
Lolo would become one of the winningest coaches
in European basketball. With him at the reins, Madrid
won EuroLeague crowns in 1978 and 1980, Saporta
Cups in 1984 and 1989, and a Korac Cup in 1988. If
we also add three Intercontinental Cups (1976, 1977
and 1978), that makes eight international titles. And
if you think that wasn’t enough, he also won 10 Spanish
League titles – eight with Real Madrid and two
with Joventut (1991 and 1992) – plus four Spanish
Cups with Madrid.
Lolo was also just a few seconds short of winning
another EuroLeague title with Joventut, but the famous
three-point shot by Sasa Djordjevic gave the
continental crown to Partizan in Istanbul in 1992.
Even today, Sainz admits that was the most bitter
moment in his coaching career, but he also highlights
that his team managed to recover from that loss and
come back to win the Spanish League.
If Istanbul was his toughest moment as a coach,
the titles he took with Madrid in 1978 and 1980 are
his sweetest memories. Both were won in Germany;
the first in Munich against Varese, 75-67, with Walter
Szczerbiak scoring 26 points; and the second in Berlin
against Maccabi Tel Aviv, 89-85, with Rafael Rullan as
the main player with 27 points.
The two Saporta Cups were won against Milano
in 1984 and Snaidero Udine in 1989, while the Korac
Cup came over Cibona, despite Drazen Petrovic’s 47
points in the second game in Zagreb. The following
season, Petrovic was a Real Madrid player.
Between 1993 and 2001 Sainz was the Spanish
national team head coach, winning a silver medal at
the 1999 FIBA EuroBasket in France. After that he
worked as a coordinator of national teams for the
Spanish federation, and in 2002 he was back where
he started, Real Madrid, to become general manager
of the basketball section until 2005.
This, of course, is just a brief bio overview of a
great coach who, between his coaching and playing
days, took more than 30 titles. And behind that there
was total dedication to basketball.
I don’t remember Sainz as a player, but as a coach
I will never forget his passion. He lived the games with
intensity and he hardly ever sat down on the bench.
Always standing on the sidelines, running up and
down to show his players what he wanted them to do
on both ends of the court.
The game played by his teams was always joyful,
fast, fun to watch and offensive-minded, with the idea
of scoring one more point than the opponent. This
Lolo Sainz
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Vladimir Stankovic
doesn’t mean he didn’t care about defense, of course,
but Lolo was old school like that. And he followed the
first unwritten rule of coaching: a coach must adapt to
the players he has, never the other way around.
Since he always had great players and scorers
in all the teams he coached, it’s only natural that
Lolo paid more attention to offensive play. He was
fortunate to play alongside Clifford Luyk and Wayne
Brabender – and then to coach them in later years. In
his 14 years on the Real Madrid bench, he coached
many greats, including Szczerbiak, Rullan, Petrovic,
Mirza Delibasic, Drazen Dalipagic, Juan Antonio Corbalan,
Brad Branson, Wendell Alexis, Juanma Iturriaga,
Larry Spriggs, Brian Jackson, Fernando Martín,
Chechu Biriukov, and Johnny Rogers. At Joventut, he
worked with Jordi Villacampa, Rafa and Tomas Jofresa,
Corny Thompson and Harold Pressley, while with
the Spanish national team he coached Juan Antonio
San Epifanio, Alberto Herreros and Andres Jimenez.
In other words, Sainz was blessed to work with great
players, who were capable of turning his ideas into
results and titles.
His philosophy could be seen best in the Saporta
Cup final on March 14, 1989, when Madrid and
Petrovic played in Athens against Snaidero Caserta,
which was led by another great scorer, Oscar
Schmidt.
It was an unforgettable duel between two amazing
scorers: Petrovic netted 62 points by playing all 45
minutes (overtime included), while Schmidt finished
with 44 points in 44 minutes. Lolo only used eight of
his players –really seven, because Jose Luis Llorente
played just 4 minutes. The game ended 117-113 for
Madrid, with Petrovic and Schmidt combining for 106
points.
Even if the style of his teams was more offensive,
Lolo himself says that basketball needs balance, 50-
50 between offense and defense. He laughs at the
famous sentence uttered by Nikolic: “The winner is
not the team who scored the most points, but the one
who received the least.”
Sainz believes that is a great saying, but also that
a game will be determined by the qualities of the
players. He believes, for instance, that his Real Madrid
defended better because it had players capable of
playing great defense, while in Joventut offense prevailed
over everything.
He always demanded that his players take responsibility
but also joy in the game, and that they know
how to handle pressure. He taught his players, but as
with any great coach, he was willing to listen to – and
to accept – ideas presented by his players.
Lolo has been retired for nearly 15 years now, but
he is still a coach at heart. In an interview a couple of
years ago he said: “You cannot erase that itch. I am a
coach and I will always be. I see a lot of games on TV
and I am so into them. The only difference here is that
nobody listens to me!”
He also has an interesting opinion about basketball
“then and now”.
“What does ‘modern basketball’ even mean?” he
asked. “It has always been a modern game to me. Today
I see systems and plays I already used with Real
Madrid. And I didn’t invent them, by the way.”
However, he admits there have been some changes
in the role of coaches. For example, the coach used
to also be the sports director and his word was gospel
when it came to signing players. Now, sports directors
take care of that side of the business themselves.
Lolo was named Coach of the Year three times
in Spain, in 1977, 1985 and 1991, and he also was
awarded silver and gold medals for the Royal Order of
Sports Merit in the country, but his biggest achievement
is his basketball heritage – not to mention an
endless number of friends in Spain, and everywhere
else, because he has always been an open and kind
human being: a friend forever.
Lolo Sainz
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