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The Club Scene: BK Ventspils
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 To many in Europe, BK Ventspils is considered one of the biggest surprises through the halfway point of the ULEB Cup regular season. Standing second with a 4-1 record in Group C, ahead of better-known teams like Region Wallone Charleroi or Red Star, Ventspils is putting Latvian basketball back on the map. Indeed, when those European basketball maps were being drawn, Latvia was always prominent. Latvia was the first country to lift the European Championship trophy, back in 1935, and won the silver medal in 1939, losing to Lithuania in the final before both countries were absorbed into the USSR in 1940. The best basketball in Europe continued to be played by the Baltic Sea, and when the European club championship was created, a team from the Latvian capital, ASK Riga, won the first three titles. Latvia's long way back to prominence leads through a small city of 44,000 on the Venta River where it spills into the Baltic Sea. That is the northernmost point where elite European basketball is now played, and played well, as Ventspils has shown already in the ULEB Cup.
It is important to note that in the days when Latvian clubs thrived, there was little or no player movement between countries. Those great ASK Riga teams of the late 1950s and early 1960s, coached by a legend in the making, Aleksandar Gomelsky, were all-Latvian squads, with players like the Muznieks brothers, Malgonis Valdmanis or Yanis Kruminsh, who were also the mainstays for the USSR national team that won all European championships from 1957 to 1963, as well as silver medals in three consecutive Olympic games from 1956 to 1964. ASK Riga's first loss in a European club championships came to CSKA Moscow in 1961, which soon came to co-dominate European basketball with teams like Real Madrid and Metis Varese over a period of decades. The recent rise of Ventspils represents a rebirth to Latvian basketball at the top level. But the tradition was definitely there, waiting to be recaptured.
Two years after Latvia became independent in 1991, BK Ventspils was started as a modest club, but it quickly rose to become one of the top teams in the country. Ventspils reached the semifinals for the first time in 1996, and lost back-to-back domestic finals against Latvia's most famous team of the 1990's, Skonto Riga. But when the century and milennium turned, so did the tide of titles. Four consecutive Latvian League crowns have followed for Ventspils. The backing of its many supporters, as well as a city wholly identified with basketball, has made a difference as the European profile of Ventspils has risen one year after another. In the club's first-ever European competition, the 1998 Korac Cup, Ventspils reached the eighth-finals before losing to Aris Thessaloniki. Back-to-back Saporta Cup participations followed, but without much advancement. Things started looking up for Ventspils in the 2001 Northern Europe Basketball League (NEBL), where a single basket kept the Latvians from upsetting CSKA Moscow in the quarterfinals.
A year leater, in 2002, Ventspils finished first in its first group stage, beat out CSKA Moscow and Fenerbahce in the second group stage, earning a spot in the NEBL Final Four. Though the Latvians lost to Lietuvos Rytas in the semifinals, they won the third-place game, proving that Ventspils belonged to the elite of Northern European basketball. The next step for the Latvian champs was last season's 2003 FIBA Champions Cup, and againt they managed to reach the Final Four again, defeating powerful Unics Kazan in the playoffs. They lost to Prokom Trefl Sopot in the semis, but finished third once again, a step behind the finals. Through it all, however, Ventspils stayed true to its country's tradition and made its way up in European basketball with a majority of Latvian players on its roster. Their ULEB Cup success so far this season might have some people shake their heads in wonder, but the rise of BK Ventspils is a reality as much as good basketball in Latvia has always been.
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Monday, December 15, 2003
Javier Gancedo, ULEBcup.com
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