“In my country there is a hoop in every backyard and the children learn to say Sabonis before mama”
Those were the words from lithuanian (then playing for Soviet Union) basketball player Rimas Kurtinaitis in his speech during 1989 All Star Game 3 pointer shooting contest. He had been invited after shattering USA´s dreams to reach the final game of the Seoul’88 Olympics with his long distance shots. He has been the only non NBA player to ever participate in the All Star Weekend.
Although the reasons why I chose Lithuania as a destination were mainly others (not a very touristic country, ideal to go in August weather wise, inexpensive, I had liked the other 2 Baltic Republics after visiting them a few years before), Kurtinaitis’ statement was always in the back of my mind since I heard it and I had always been curious to see if it was really true that basketball is at the very heart of lithuanians. As Eurobasket 2011 was going to be held there starting just a few days after my visit, it felt like another good reason to go, just the right timing.
And to be honest I had never seen such passion for basketball anywhere as during the days I travelled around Lithuania. It is a fairy tale country with deep forests, beautiful castles, hundreds of lakes, fine sand beaches…and basketball everywhere. Basketball seemed to be in the genes of Lithuanian people and the madness was not only because the Eurobasket was about to start. It is the Neverland for basketball freaks, where we all would like to live.
You get the first glimpse at the airport. Giant pictures of the national team players welcome you, some hanging from the ceiling, some others in the wall. You could feel immediately that the lithuanians were going to do their best to turn the Eurobasket into a big success. Every single day I was there I could see on TV either basketball games or basketball related programs in prime time. They were friendly games and in some Lithuania was not even playing!! it really amazed me.
In Vilnius Old Town (UNESCO World Heritage Site) almost every shop, business or corner had something displayed related to the Eurobasket: a giant basket ball in front of the Town Hall, bins with a zone painted in the sidewalk so they looked like hoops, models with balls instead of heads in the windows of fashion shops…
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The streets of any of the cities I visited had lots of adverts with basketball players in, or related to the Eurobasket, or simply about basketball: mobile phones, electrical appliances, TV and computer chains…even banking products.
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When the government launches a campaign for young people they tend to use something related with basketball so the young lithuanians get interested in it. An example below is a campaign to eradicate prostitution:
And in the news agents most of the magazine covers were also related to the Eurobasket…including some porn magazine in which the girls posed with a basket ball and nothing else.. (I just took a tiny peek and strictly for journalistic purposes as you can imagine)
Surprisingly enough some the restaurants and pubs had a basketball fan menu…
When travelling up and down the country in the rental car I could witness first hand that good old Kutinaitis was not bluffing at all in his All Star speech: there were hoops and courts literally everywhere, in big cities and tiny villages, in private gardens and backyards, even I saw one in a nature reserve in the middle of nowhere. Some of them were falling apart but ALL of them had nets, definitely meaning that they were alive and being used. The absence of football pitches was shocking and made a nice contrast with kids walking around in the street dribbling with orange balls.
One of the main sponsors of the tournament was the most popular of local beers: Svyturis. In many bars, restaurants and pubs the waiters and waitresses wore Eurobasket t-shirts sponsored by Svyturis. In Juodkrante, a small village in the Curonian Spit, we had some small basketball chitchat with Martynas, who worked as a waiter in the restaurant we were having lunch. We asked him if it was possible to get one of those t-shirts for us and he was nice enough to give us one the next day.
If there is a basketball heart and soul in Lithuania that is the city of Kaunas. We went to the Žalgiris old venue, the legendary Kaunas Sports Hall, built in 1939 for the Eurobasket’39 held here when the country was still independent, before the german and soviet invasions and WWII. They were doing some repairs and it was open, so we managed to go in and had the wonderful chance to walk around the courts and feel the historic atmosphere. If someone would have told me halfway through the 80s that one day I was going to be walking around in this court and taking pictures (being still the USSR and so on) I would not have believed it.
Just by the KSH there is a bar called Komanda with the walls covered with old pics of the “classic” Žalgiris of the 80s, some of them were superb. The bar was closed as they were cleaning and refurbishing it, but after insisting they let me, take some pics and have a beer to honour the lithuanian heroes.
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Back in Vilnius and we thought nothing could surprise us any more…our jaw dropped open when we went to visit the famous Vilnius TV Tower and realised that they had put gigantic nets on it, so it looked like an impossibly big hoop. The illuminated tower with the net at night from the plane during the take off was the last image I saw from Lithuania. Could not have been any better.
I wish the best to the Lithuanian national basketball team. Their people and their fans truly deserve it.
Lietuva Ačiū!!
PS: I’d like to dedicate this post to the sveikis: Fran, Raquel and Sonia, my extremely patient travel mates. And to sweet Aiste for helping us in Klaipeda.
PS2: this article was published in spanish in the basketball website Basketme
http://www.basketme.com/2.0/opinion.php?id=533
