Oscar Schmidt, Giacomo Galanda’s touching remembrance: "Smile at basketball"
The passing of Oscar Schmidt, nipped at just 68 years old after a long and difficult battle with brain cancer, has generated deep mourning throughout the basketball world and beyond. The words of sorrow and affection dedicated to the great Brazilian basketball star were joined by Giacomo Galanda, who in a post on Instagram attributed to the legendary ‘Mano Santa’ a fair share of the passion that as a boy led him to embrace the sport of which ‘Gek’ became one of the leading European exponents at the turn of the century. Going so far as to win, in addition to three championships, gold at the 1999 European Championships and Olympic silver in Athens 2004.
“There were several reasons why in Italy a boy fell in love with basketball in the 1980s and 1990s,” Galanda wrote on his official Instagram profile. Oscar Schmidt was certainly one of them. Go review his shooting technique: poetry! Go review his NBA Hall of Fame speech in full: funny and moving, like the moments when he enjoys the presence of his idol Larry Bird. Thank you for the Special Person you were. I personally want to remember you in your own voice…SMILE AT BASKETBALL.”
Schmidt’s family announced his passing with a touching message, emphasizing how the former champion faced his illness “with courage, dignity and resilience, remaining until the end an example of determination, generosity and love of life.” A legacy, family members added, “that goes far beyond sports and will continue to inspire generations of athletes and fans in Brazil and around the world.” Words echoed by son Felipe’s heartbreaking message, “As a son, I only have to say, Dad, I will miss you. I will honor everything you taught me about how to be a man and try to be at least 10 percent of the human being you were. You were a life example for me and I will never forget you.”
Schmidt’s bond with Italy was long, intense and unbreakable. At Juvecaserta, where he played for eight seasons from 1982 to 1990, he became an absolute icon, capable of dominating the league’s scorer charts with extraordinary averages and performances that have remained in legend. In Serie A he scored 13,957 points, a record for a foreign player, with an average of 34.6 points per game and peaks over 60. He is also the player – among those with at least 100 appearances – to have scored 50 or more points in a single game more times: as many as 28 times in 403 games. Caserta retired his number 18 jersey and in 2016 awarded him honorary citizenship, symbolic recognition of a mutual love that has never faded.
It was precisely the relationship with Caserta that had remained in Schmidt’s heart until his final years. In an interview given in 2023, the Brazilian had confessed all his attachment to the Campania city: “Do you know what it means to live eight years in the same place? A lifetime, only here it was possible. I was happy when I arrived in Caserta in ’82, because the dream of playing in Italy was realized.” The separation in 1990, experienced with great bitterness, had not extinguished the passion, however: “They put a meaningless loser plaque on me. Loser to me, who won practically everything with clubs? Winning here would have been the crowning achievement of my career, but they wouldn’t let me. I stayed in Italy anyway: I cried and scored.” After Caserta, Schmidt had continued his Italian adventure at Pallacanestro Pavia, where he played until 1993, before returning to Brazil.
Planetary icon despite never treading NBA parquet, Schmidt was inducted in 2013 into the Basketball Hall of Fame (Naismith Memorial), becoming the first Brazilian to receive this honor. With the greenoro national team, he participated in five consecutive Olympics, setting the record for all-time top Olympic scorer with more than 1,000 points. Numbers that tell the story of the greatness of a unique champion, capable of winning the hearts of fans around the world – and inspiring, as Galanda recalls movingly, entire generations of young Italian basketball players.
