Oscar Schmidt

Basketball

This is no sentimental farewell tour for Oscar Schmidt. The fifth and final Olympics are looking a lot like the previous four for international basketball’s most profilic scorer.

“This will be my last national team,” Schmidt said Monday after scoring 32 points in Brazil’s 89-87 loss to Greece. “Our team is in a very big transition period with eight first-time Olympians. My job is to play good … to help these guys recognize what it takes to be a team.”

Schmidt is easy to recognize because he looks all of his 38 years. When he starts shooting, usually from well beyond the 3-point line, people light up in recognition of a master marksman.

“I have lost jump. I have lost quickness. But I have gained more confidence,” he said. “I am practicing very hard. Each of the last 20 days, I have taken over 1,000 shots each day.”

He’s known simply as Oscar. To basketball fans in Europe and South America, it is a name that has meant unequalled success on the offensive end of the court.

After an opening 45-point effort against Puerto Rico, Schmidt was asked if he had thought he could score 40 points in his fifth Olympics.

“Really,” he said with a smile creasing his face, “I thought only 30.”

At 6-foot-8 and 235 pounds Schmidt doesn’t look like a scoring machine. He owns the Olympic record for points in a game with 55 against Spain in 1988.

He has trouble remembering being held to less than 20 points in any of his 30-plus Olympic games. He has no trouble recounting his greatest basketball thrill.

“The Pan Am Games,” is all Schmidt answers.

That would be in Indianapolis in 1987, when Schmidt scored 46 points in a victory over the U.S. in the gold medal game and the start of monumental change for international basketball. Five years later, the U.S. roster was filled with NBA stars.