Flamengo, the best basketball club in the world

SAN JUAN (William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas) - It was quite the scene. Flamengo, Rio de Janeiro's (and Brazil's) most followed club, was about to beat Maccabi Tel Aviv, Euroleague reigning champion, when I turned around to look at the emotional and tearful staff working the Intercontinental Cup. That's when it clicked: this has been quite the basketball year for them.

Flamengo was founded in 1895 for rowing competitions and today it is by far the most popular club in the country with more than 40 million followers. It is not uncommon to go to any random corner of the Americas to find "black and red" flags from Flamengo fans. I have seen them in Quito, Maturin and Buenos Aires. They are everywhere.

Of course "futbol" is their biggest draw, but they have a rich basketball history. The first basketball championship for the club came in 1919 (13 years before FIBA was even founded) and they have remained winners ever since, attaining nine championships in their history, including three in the young NBB Brazilian league.

Some of the most important Brazilian basketball players of all time have worn the black and red colors. The great Oscar Schmidt retired as a member of Flamengo and scored 7,241 of his more than 44,000 career points with the team.

But at the international level they hadn't had huge success.

In 2013, prior to this incredible run, Flamengo was the victim in maybe the biggest upset in the history of club competitions in the Americas. It was in Buenos Aires, where Mavort, an Ecuadorian club that had made it to the semifinals as a result of a withdrawal, surprised Flamengo. Mavort beat them by two points and sent them home in the semis of the Liga de las Americas. It was a huge disappointment for them.

They bounced back though and won the 5th edition of the NBB, qualifying and positioning themselves for a shot at the 2014 Liga de las Americas title.

The most important club competition in the Americas began for Flamengo in (fittingly) Ecuador, with Mavort as the home team. But this 2014 squad looked totally different and had a different dominating feel. They had added Argentinean point guard and one of the most sought after prospect in the Americas in Nicolas Laprovittola and North American big man Jerome Meyinsse to an already packed linuep.
 
The Brazilian squad opened up the 2014 edition against Capitanes de Arecibo of Puerto Rico, a perennial powerhouse in the competition and ended up beating them 123-90. Then they did not lose again in the competition. Undefeated and averaging a margin of victory of 19.7 points per game. The championship won them the opportunity of facing the Euroleague champs in the Intercontinental Cup.

They then won a second consecutive championship in the NBB league and the stage was set for a team from the Americas to win the Intercontinental Cup for the first time since 1979, when an Oscar Schmidt-led Sirio club won it for Brazil in Sao Paulo against Bosna from Sarajevo.

This time the adversary was Maccabi Tel Aviv, a team that had surprised the world a couple of months earlier by beating CSKA and Real Madrid on their way to lifting the Euroleague trophy.

So the Intercontinental Cup came and Flamengo added another Argentinean in Walter Herrmann, along with a second North American big man in Derrick Caracter, while Maccabi lost key figures in now Cleveland Cavaliers head coach David Blatt and Euroleague MVP Tyrese Rice. (Maccabi substituted Rice well though, with Jeremy Pargo, a star and clutch performer who torched Flamengo in both games).

Allow me to go back to that scene.

There was a minute to go in the game. I looked back at the Flamengo staff that worked with us in the Intercontinental Cup and saw it, they could not hold back the tears. It was emotional for everybody, as everything is in Brazil. It was beautiful.

Security was instructed to not let anybody onto the court to celebrate the victory. The public announcer did his job and talked to the crowd, letting them know that they should not rush the court. But when it was all said and done, they too could not hold back. Thousands and thousands of fans rushed the court and cried, hugged, jumped and sung in harmony. Flamengo had done it.

Laprovittola and Meyinsse were key in the historic achievement for the Brazilian team. So was head coach Jose Neto. In two years he had won two national league championships, a Liga de las Americas Championship and now the Intercontinental Cup. Quite the run.

I talked to him a couple of days after the win. He was watching the South American League on TV and wrote to me raving about another Brazilian team that was playing the opening group of the competition. He loves the game.

After we exchanged a couple of messages I told him he has the best job in the world: calling Rio de Janeiro home, with the most important club in the country in an organizations that does everything to give him great teams to coach.

He told me: "That's why I always want to win. My goal is to stay here for a long time."

I think he's safe for a while. Flamengo has won everything they have played in in two years. What other team has been that consistent?

There's no doubt about it, they deserve to be called the best basketball club in the world.

William Rosario

FIBA

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