Lithuanian players celebrate after the quarterfinal against Argentina at the 2010 World Basketball Championship on September 9, 2010. Lithuania won the match 104 to 85. Photo: CFP

Lithuania, where the basketball European Championships were held on August 31, has long been a country mad for the sport with the big orange ball, squashing football in popularity.

“It’s our country’s second religion,” just behind Catholicism, goes a popular saying in the small Baltic EU republic surrounded by Poland, Russia’s Kaliningrad, Belarus, Latvia and the Baltic Sea.

With a population of just 3 million, the ex-Soviet state which joined the EU in 2004 is a European minnow. But where basketball is concerned, it’s a global giant.

Games, even the junior leagues, are a TV staple and when team Lithuania plays, all eyes are glued to the screen.
Since Lithuania broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1990, away games have drawn a merry band of traveling fans clad in the national colors of yellow, green and red.

And over its two decades of independence, Lithuania has scored impressive results.

Its two best clubs – Vilnius and Kaunas – now set to play host to the second and final rounds of the Euro championships, have won European Cups and the national side is among the world’s best.

With an impressive pool of talent for such a small country, Lithuania won the 2003 European championships thanks to soaring, robust players performing with stunning skill.

After a poor 11th-place performance during Euro 2009, Lithuania recovered its form during the 2010 world championships where it took the bronze despite suffering several upsets.

It also ranked in the first four in the five Olympic Games since independence, winning bronze in 1992, 1996, 2000 and taking the fourth spot in 2004 and 2008.

Basketball is freedom

While it was still under the thumb of Moscow as a Soviet republic, Lithuania made waves at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games contributing four players to the “starting five” on team USSR, including the legendary centre Arvydas Sabonis.

These players alone scored 62 of the USSR’s 82 points which gave the Soviets victory over the US States in the final, a win the Lithuanians cheered as their own rather than handing the laurels to their reviled Soviet masters.

While the nation marks the 70th anniversary of the first deportations this year, an exhibition at a museum in Vilnius chronicling Soviet-era KGB secret police activities and crimes shows the pivotal role basketball played in helping deportees survive Siberian camps.

Grainy photos show political prisoners clad in the jerseys of Lithuanian teams like Zalgiris Kaunas playing basketball in the Gulag, making dribbling down the court a symbol of national resistance and pride.

Now, as the hosts of these championships, Lithuanians are feeling this pride again.

“We want to show all of Europe just how much we love basketball,” said Arvydas Sabonis, the ambassador of the championships. “It’s a great day for our country, 72 years later, basketball is back in Lithuania.” 

Before being annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, this Baltic state organized and won the Euro championships, retaining the title it won two years earlier.

“We were supposed to host the next Euro championships but World War II erupted in the meantime,” explains Lithuanian basketball federation head Vladas Garastas. 

“Lithuania has been waiting for the Euro championships for a very long time. And we want it to be the best one ever in history.” 

Agencies
60,000 Lithuanians dribble for new record 

Gearing up for the men’s basketball European Championships, an estimated 60,000 Lithuanians flooded streets in cities across the basketball-crazy Baltic EU state in an attempt to set a new Guinness world record for dribbling.

Clad in the green of Lithuania’s national team, basketball fans dribbled for five-minutes non-stop in six cities that are to host the European championships.  

“We came here because we love basketball. For Lithuanians this is not just a sport but more a way of life,” said 28-year-old Audrius Rudys, standing together with his wife and nearly two-year-old son, all three in green.

“I remember watching basketball with my grandpa when I was a small child. It was very important. Nothing unites Lithuanians more than basketball,” his wife Jurgita Rudiene said.

They were among 15,000 fans who gathered in the capital Vilnius for the grand opening ceremony, attended by top leaders and heads from Europe’s basketball governing body FIBA Europe.

The Lithuanian squad is under pressure to shine in the tournament, that will see 24 national teams competing for the first time.

A survey released on August 29 showed 56 percent of Lithuanians believed the team will play in the finals, despite bumpy preparations.

In the build-up to the championships, the team lost five games and had only four wins but that included victory over defending champions and main favorites Spain. 

“Of course, we expect gold but we will support our team anyway,” Rudiene said.

Basketball is often dubbed the second religion – after Catholicism – in Lithuania. The nation of 3 million shone on the sport’s global stage in the 1930s.

After winning the 1939 tournament at home, Lithuania secured the right to host the next tournament but World War II and subsequent Soviet occupation meant a 72-year long break until now.

“We have been waiting for this festival 70 years. Basketball united and inspires Lithuania,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said.

Lithuania returned to international basketball after declaring independence from Moscow in 1990 and its men’s side went on to claim Olympic bronze in 1992, 1996 and 2000 as well European gold in 2003.

It finished third in the World championships last year.

To date, the most people dribbling a basketball simultaneously was 7,556 during an event organised by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Palestine, on July 22, 2010, according to information on the Guinness World Records webpage.

However, organizers of Lithuania’s dribbling-off said the goal was to beat a record set by neighbouring Poland in 2009 when 30,000 people dribbled basketballs ahead of Euro 2009.