Oscar Schmidt, the legendary Brazilian player who was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, has died. He was 68 years old.
In a statement on Friday, Schmidt’s family said he fought a brain tumor for 15 years “with courage, dignity and resilience … while remaining a role model of determination, generosity and love of life.”
Schmidt, nicknamed “The Holy Hand,” was arguably the best basketball player to never play in the NBA. He began his professional career at 16 and didn’t retire until 45. Schmidt holds the all-time record for points scored in the Olympic Games (1,093) and at the FIBA World Cup (906). He is also, unofficially, the second-leading scorer in professional basketball history, behind LeBron James.
“I followed his whole career and had hoped he would play in the NBA so I could compete against him or with him,” Larry Bird told the Boston Herald in 2013. “He had an awesome career.”
Bird presented Schmidt at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “Oscar was one of the great scorers of our time,” Bird said leading up to that ceremony. “He was hard to stop. You couldn’t guard him with one player. And the way he moved to get open, he could create any shot that he wanted.”
Around that same time, Kobe Bryant said Schmidt was “my guy.”
“He was Bird before I ever had a chance to see what Bird was,” Bryant said.
Schmidt was drafted by the New Jersey Nets in 1984 and participated in their training camp, but he chose to continue playing in Italy — and for the Brazilian national team — instead of signing an NBA contract. A young Bryant idolized Schmidt in the years that Schmidt played against Bryant’s father, Joe, in the Italian league.
Schmidt scored 55 points against Spain at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, still a single-game record. His most famous scoring eruption, however, may be the one that took place a year earlier in Indianapolis. In the gold medal game at the Pan American Games, he scored 46 points and led Brazil to an upset victory over a United States team stacked with college stars, including David Robinson and Danny Manning.
Brazil trailed by as many as 20 points, and a 29-year-old Schmidt scored 35 of his points during a second-half comeback.
In the history of international basketball, few players are as accomplished as Schmidt. He was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2010, and he played in five Olympic Games and four FIBA World Cups. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Schmidt was one of the flag bearers at the opening ceremony. He is widely considered the best Brazilian player of all time.
