Very warm and a bit sad

The celebration of the 90th anniversary of Alexander Gomelsky at USH CSKA turned out to be touching and memorable.

Game of legends participants began to gather about an hour and a half before the start. And the situation made the heart feel a mixture of warmth and sadness, joy and nostalgia. The hall of the legendary arena was wandered by those men, who in the 1990’s and 2000’s became symbols of Russian and European basketball. There were hugs and handshakes; Julius Nwosu, who had not been in Moscow for two decades, literally saddled Stanislav Yeremin, under whose guidance he went to the Final Four with CSKA.

Our club wanted to collect the maximum number of stars and friends to celebrate Alexander Gomelsky’s anniversary. Unfortunately, it was not possible to snatch everyone in the middle of the season. For example, there were just two players from the glorious Olympic team with which the Papa won the Olympics-88: Muscovite Sergey Tarakanov and guest from Astana, ex-Army Man Valery Tikhonenko. However, there was huge number of legends around: members of the basketball Hall of Fame Zoran Slavnić, Pierluigi Marzorati and Mickey Berkowitz along with non-basketball greats Boris Mikhailov, Irina Rodnina, Igor Ter-Ovanesyan, Kostya Tszyu, and Ilya Averbukh – the latter was a producer of the show.

The event started without long introductions: Andrei Vatutin and Vladimir Gomelsky paid short tribute to the hero of the day. And the show was great. There were laser projections on the floor and big screens, dancers and ballerinas, drummers and ensemble of wind instruments, dancers and equilibrists, famous singers and beginners. Gosha Kutsenko, whose Shag Vmeste Foundation will receive all the proceeds from the tickets sold, performed a lyrical composition, Iosif Kobzon, Gomelsky’s great friend, sang the favorite song of Alexander Iakovlevich “I Love You, Life”.

The game itself, which the fans were waiting for, turned out to be quite tense in the sense of the score development, but the spectators filled the gym not to see this. They enjoyed watching famous long three-pointers by Igor Kudelin (he made four to the delight of the audience), tricks by Sergei Panov, smiles of Matjaz Smodis, fancy moves by Theodoros Papaloukas, rebounds by Mirsad Turkcan, excellent shape of Nikita Morgunov and surprised level of Boris Shevchuk who won Instagram contest for CSKA fans and managed to score from beyond the arc.

To the credit of the legends, they did not hurry to leave the floor after the end of the event and pleased the fans who poured onto the court: not everyone was able to make it to the autograph session before the start of the basketball evening.

Red – Blue: 56-50

RED: Bazarevich (0), Kudelin (16), Panov (16), Kisurin (2), Dayneko (6) – start; Morgunov (7), Yudin (3), Z.Pashutin (3), Shevchuk (3), Savrasenko (2), Mikhailov (2), Fetisov (0), Kurashov (0). Coaches – Eremin, Edeshko, Tarlac.
BLUE: Papaloukas (11), Giricek (0), Siskauskas (4), Smodis (5), Nwosu (2) – start; Kutluay (7), Rigaudeau (7), Alvertis (6), Fučka (4), Nesterovic (4), Turkcan (0), Kattache (0). Coaches – Ivkovic, Danilovic, Bodiroga.