Yesterday’s Drazen Petrovic video session drew a lot of interest — players with that much legend attached to them generally do. Another such player with many “what if” connotations attached at the NBA level was Oscar Schmidt. The 6’8″ sharp-shooting Brazilian forward is generally considered to be the best player never to have played in the NBA (more on that below).
On March 14, 1989 in Athens, Greece, Petro and Schmidt matched up in an epic battle, competing for the European Cup. Reader Edu was kind enough to send on the following video highlights of the game. Schmidt (Snaidero Caserta) put up 44 points in a barrage of outside shots, however it was not enough in this case, as Petrovic poured in an amazing 62 points for Real Madrid in what seemed to be an endless array of three-pointers and running bank shots. Needless to say, scoring at those sort of levels is freakin’ hard playing on a stage such as this.
Ben Steele, writer at Order of the Court (a great resource on games gone by) got in touch with me about the piece he wrote on this match. Here are some of the fantastic excerpts:
There were seismic changes going on across the pond in 1989. Sure, the fall of communism grabbed all the headlines. But lost in all the geopolitics is that foreign basketball players were starting to get taken seriously as professionals.
It was a matchup between two of the top non-American players at that time, Real’s Drazen Petrovic and Snaidero’s Oscar Schmidt.
Petrovic came out like a house afire against Snaidero. He hit 3 three-pointers to go with an array mid-range moves, piling up 27 points by halftime. Against the laissez-faire defense of Snaidero’s guards, Petrovic could get any shot he wanted. Schmidt wasn’t that far behind Petrovic in heating up and, by the end of regulation, both stars were going shot for shot.
Schmidt’s three-pointer with 17 seconds remaining forced overtime. Petrovic finished regulation with 52 points and Schmidt had 41. Petrovic was able to grab the momentum in overtime, finishing with 62 points to Schmidt’s 44 as Real Madrid earned a 117-113 victory.
Clearly this was a battle of two players who needed to play on the world’s greatest stage against its greatest players. Petrovic would move onto the world’s greatest domestic league, the NBA. Being drafted in the third round by the Portland Trail Blazers in 1986, two years after Schmidt was drafted by the New Jersey Nets in the sixth round, he was trapped with little playing time initially behind Clyde Drexler. He got his break when he was traded to the Nets, ultimately becoming a star shooter who had his career cut remarkably short.
In the the gold medal game of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Petrovic’s Croatia took on the USA Dream Team, matching Petro up against Michael Jordan most of the way. USA were clearly the better team and took the victory, however the Croatian shooting guard put up an admirable 24 points to Jordan’s 22, just months before his tragic death. (Check out Larry Bird’s matador defence at the 2:30 mark as well).
Schmidt was an even brighter star on the world stage. He never made his way to the NBA, preferring to stick to what he knew best. His Interbasket profile says:
The New Jersey Nets took him with a sixth round pick in 1984. The Nets spent a number of years trying to convince him to come over to the NBA but Schmidt refused fearing that he would not get a featured role. “I know my limitations, my defects,” he said “but I could never play 10 minutes a game. [The] NBA is great if you are a star. But if not, you get moved around. My friend (Georgi) Glouchkov played a year in Phoenix. He tells me bad stories about [the] NBA. The guards [did not] like him, they don’t pass him the ball. I would not like that. I could not stand that.”
His performances at international level were legendary. One in particular that stood out was the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis. Against the likes of David Robinson, Danny Manning and Pervis Ellison, Schmidt led Brazil to a stunning comeback victory as he scored 46 points in a 120-115 result, winning the gold medal.
This video, whilst in Portuguese, gives a strong visual representation of the celebrations involved with Brazil’s win.
Schmidt played at five Olympics, being top scorer at three of them (’88, ’92, ’96). He scored 49,703 top-level points with various clubs at Brazil’s national team, in contrast to NBA scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points.
We will never know how Schmidt’s game would have translated to the NBA — his outside shooting sure reminds many of a particular legendary hick from the Boston Celtics. As Ben Steele said:
It is tough to say how Schmidt would have fared if he had tried to join Petrovic in the NBA. He had inside-outside skills but his game – and physical appearance – bore a striking resemblance to Danny Ferry. Then again, he averaged 28.8 points per game in Olympic play.
