COINS DEDICATED TO BASKETBALL

After the Atlanta Olympic Games a generation change took place in Lithuanian basketball. The relay was taken over by younger representatives of the Lithuanian basketball school. While they hardened and prepared for their greatest victories, a new page was written in the chronicle of victories by the Lithuanian national women’s team who won the European Women‘s Basketball Championship in Hungary in 1997.

The Lithuanian basketball players also added to their arsenal of Olympic medals in the third consecutive games in Sydney in 2000. The young yet ambitious Lithuanian national team got on the podium again to take its bronze.

Three years later our country’s basketball fans lived to see a still more impressive victory. In the European Basketball Championship in Sweden in 2003, Lithuania went all the way with success to claim gold for the third time in its basketball history. After an interval of 64 years Lithuania was again the strongest team in the Old Continent!

During that time the Lithuanian national team managed to write another two bronze pages in the country’s basketball history, winning the third place in the European Championship in Spain in 2007 and a set of bronze medals in the World Championship in Turkey in 2010 for the first time in its history.

These victories not only confirmed that Lithuania deserves being called a basketball country; they raised a hope that the 2011 World Championship would become a real basketball gala for all fans who love this game.

Linas KunigėlisMember of the “Euro Basket 2011” Organising Committee

COINS DEDICATED TO BASKETBALL

Denomination 50 litasGold Au 999.9 Quality proof

Diameter 16.25 mmWeight 3.10 gMintage 5 000

Issued 2011

Denomination 1 litas Alloy of copper and nickel

Cu 75%, Ni 25%Diameter 22.30 mm

Weight 6.25 gMintage 1 000 000

Designed by Liudas Parulskis and Giedrius Paulauskis

Information is available at the Bank of LithuaniaTel. +370 5 268 0316Fax +370 5 268 0314

www.lb.lt

The coins were minted at the UAB Lithuanian Mint www.lithuanian-mint.lt

Lithuanian Collectors Coins © Lietuvos bankas, 2011

Photographs from the Lithuanian Sports Museum, Lithuanian pressphoto agency Fotodiena, and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis National Art Museum are used in the booklet

Published by the Bank of Lithuania, Gedimino pr. 6, LT-01103 Vilnius Printed by the UAB “LODVILA”, Sėlių g. 3A, LT-08125 Vilnius

Lithuania’s best basketball player A. Sabonis

Sculpture “Basketball player” (sculptor T. Zikaras), 1944

The Euroleague cup won by “Žalgiris” basketball players

in Munich, 1999

Champion of the European Basketball

Championship P. Lubinas, 1939

Champion of the Olympic Games in Munich

M. Paulauskas, 1972

President of the Republic of Lithuania A. Smetona’s gift to the

Lithuanian national team, the winner of the European Basketball

Championship, 1939

Lithuanian Collectors Coins

Springfield University physical education instructor James Naismith, who drew up the first rules of a new game, basketball in 1891, just wished to think up an indoor game for his students during winter when harsh weather conditions prevent from taking exercise

outdoors. In the 20th century, basketball crossed the borders of all countries to become a most popular game across the world and a rallying passion and national pride for the population of the small country Lithuania located on the Baltic Sea. Symbolically, the 2011 European Basketball Championship in Lithuania coincides with this game’s 120th anniversary celebration across the world.

23 April 1922 is considered the birthday of Lithuanian basketball. On that day, the first official match between the city team and the Lithuanian Physical Education Union’s team took place in Kaunas. The legendary Lithuanian pilot Steponas Darius, who afterwards flew across the Atlantic together with Stasys Girėnas, contributed to the fame of basketball as well. Through his efforts, a basketball rulebook was published in Lithuanian. Since then, interest has been taken in this game. Winning two European championships before World War Two (in 1937 and 1939) made the citizens of the re-established state of Lithuania feel full members of Europe.

The year 1937 represents the first date in the chronicle of Lithuanian basketballs’ most glorious victories. The Lithuanian team went to that year’s championship in Riga as outsiders and returned as the champions of Europe. Already in the first match Lithuania defeated one of the-then best teams, Italy, but that was the beginning of the sensation only. The rivals – Estonia, Egypt, Poland and, in the finals, Italy again stumbled against the Lithuanian team one after another. The European Champion’s title was brought to Lithuania. The 1937 victory in the Riga Sports Hall became as if a starting point, it granted the right to organise the 1939 European Championship in Lithuania. A new arena, Kaunas Sports Hall was built specially for this tournament. While playing at home, Lithuanian basketball players repeated the march of triumph to become the champions of Europe for a second consecutive time. The wins of the men’s team fuelled a real basketball and Lithuanian entire sports boom: sports clubs and teams were established; new basketball courts and football fields were built. In an effort not to lag behind men, women basketball players became silver medallists of the European Championship in Rome in 1938.

In the 1980‘s, a team was fielded in Kaunas, which raised the name of the city and of Lithuanian basketball to new heights. Led by the brightest all-time basketball star Arvydas Sabonis, the basketball players of Kaunas “Žalgiris” won the USSR Championship three times in turn, twice played in the finals of European cup tournaments in 1985–1987, and brought the William Jones Cup to Lithuania in 1986 to become the winner of the world’s best clubs’ unofficial championship.

A few years later, the premier players of the legendary “Žalgiris” will form the kernel of the Lithuanian national team. However, three stars of the-then “Žalgiris” (Arvydas Sabonis, Rimas Kurtinaitis and Valdemaras Chomičius) and the leader of Vilnius “Statyba” Šarūnas Marčiulionis managed to astonish the entire basketball world as early as before the re-establishment of Independence. In the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988 they brought the USSR team onto the highest step of the podium of honour, bringing Olympic gold to Lithuania. It was the last time that the talented Lithuanian basketball players got to defend the honour of the USSR team. The return of Independent Lithuania’s team to the international basketball world was impressive: at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games our basketball team, led by A. Sabonis and Š. Marčiulionis, won Olympic bronze. For all basketball players and their compatriots this meant more than bronze medals. “This bronze medal brings more happiness to me than gold at the Seoul Olympiad. I dedicate this medal to all people of Lithuania”, A. Sabonis said after the last decisive match. For the first time in the history of Lithuanian basketball a Lithuanian tricolour was raised in the Olympic arena during the awarding ceremony. It was Lithuanian basketball‘s official announcement to the entire world: “We are back”.

Four years later, the Lithuanian national team repeated its bronze play in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games having paved its way to a second Olympic bronze in 1995, when it became Europe’s vice champion in Greece.

Memorial medal of the European Basketball Championship in Riga, 1937

A ticket of the European Basketball Championship in Kaunas, 1939

The Lithuanian national men’s basketball team – the winner of the European

Basketball Championship in Riga, 1937

The poster of the European Basketball Championship

in Kaunas, 1939

“The Basketball Game“ by S. Darius, 1926–1927

Phot

o V.

Šči

avin

skas

(„Li

etuv

os ry

tas“

)

The Lithuanian national basketball team’s third place medal won in the

World Championship, 2010

A new generation of basketball players grew up after the War. It was to compete in Soviet Union basketball tournaments and wear the red costumes of the USSR team. It soon turned out that neither the War nor occupation destroyed Lithuanian basketball. Lithuania’s best basketball players gathered up into the team of Kaunas Institute of Physical Education to win gold medals at the USSR Championship. Four players of this team: Vytautas Kulakauskas, Kazimieras Petkevičius, Stepas Butautas and Justinas Lagunavičius were selected for the USSR team and returned from the 1947 European Championship in Prague with gold medals. The tradition started by the group of four was subsequently successfully continued by other representatives of the Lithuanian basketball school, such as Modestas Paulauskas, Angelė Rupšienė, etc. As members of the USSR team, they won different awards in European and world championships as well as Olympic Games.