The ten -year -old boy Wlamir had just changed home in São Vicente, the city of the São Paulo coast where he was born. His new friends beat an orange ball and called him to join them. “I jumped the wall. And never left a basketball court,” he would say later, recalling the moment he woke up to his vocation.
Wlamir Marques died on Tuesday (18), after a period hospitalized in the ICU of a private hospital in Sao Paulo. The information was released by CBB (Brazilian Basketball Confederation). “Wlamir leaves an eternal legacy, being remembered as one of the greatest athletes to represent Brazil in world sport,” wrote the entity.
He left as one of the biggest names in basketball history – or from basketball, as he preferred – in Brazil. Probably, as many scholars of the sport point, the largest.
The multipurpose 1.85 m ward was two -time champion with the Brazilian team and vice on two occasions. Exponent of a historical generation, acted between the 50s and 60s with names such as Amaury, Ubiratan and Rosa Branca and won two Olympic medals. A more than sufficient trajectory to include it-it is very late, it is true, only in 2023-in the Hall of fame of FIBA (International Basketball Federation).
The talent took him to the XV of Piracicaba and from there, as a teenager, to the national team. It was already a well -established name on the national team when, on the eve of the 1959 World Cup, he abandoned the concentration to accompany the birth of one of his children, also Wlamir. Cutted by the disciplinary Togo Renan Soares, a technician better known as Kanela, was eventually renowned.
“I came back as if nothing had happened. It was an act of rebellion. I agree that it deserved to have been cut, but it was all headed. I didn’t regret it. After we won the World Cup and we were returning to Brazil, Kanela sat next to me on the plane and said, ‘German, almost we played it all out,'” he recalled, in an interview with the interview with Sheet em 2019.
The tasty achievement in Chile would probably not have been possible without the disqualification of the unbeaten Soviet Union – in the context of the Cold War, the Soviets refused to face Formosa (today Taiwan), who played as an independent nation of China. But in 1963, in Rio de Janeiro, at the greatest moment of Brazilian basketball, there were no asterisks.
Brazil has won all the games it played at Maracanãzinho, sacramenting the triumph with a 85-81 win over Willis Reed’s United States with a decisive basket of Wlamir. According to Nelson Rodrigues, whose short-sighted eyes filled with the party that took over the river, there was a collective drunkenness previously only provoked by football. “With each step, a Brazilian with a civilly face in the gutter was seen. […] Basketball has given us its first drunks, “wrote the chronicler in O Globo.
“That was a business that was growing. In the first game, there were not so many people. But we were winning, we were unbeaten champions. In the final game, there were people hung in every corner of Maracanãzinho, and not even today’s Maracanãzinho, it was a lot of people. Sheet em 2023.
He has always made a point of valuing the two world runners-up of the national team, obtained in 1954 and 1970. His bronze medals at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, and from 1964 in Tokyo, where he was a flag bearer, help build a curriculum without a true parallel in world basketball, not just the Brazilian.
There is also no basketball player from Brazil as recognized by a club as Wlamir is by Corinthians. The Boleiros Neco, Teleco, Claudio, Luizinho, Baltazar, Basil, Rivellino, Zé Maria, Wladimir, Socrates, Ronaldo (the goalkeeper, obvious) and Marcelinho have busts at the headquarters of the association, São Jorge Park. Wlamir has not just a bust. The bust is in the gym that has been called since 2016 with Wlamir Marques, Wlamirzão. No team player uses shirt 5, retired in honor of the largest.
“The emotion of Corinthians gave my name to the gym is the greatest I could have received in my sports life,” Wlamirzão often repeated, who, resident of the east of São Paulo, became a frequent attendant of Wlamirzão. He saw, for example, on the edge of the court, the dreamed achievement of the National Futsal League in 2016.
There is no exaggeration in coronation to an idol appreciated by talent and for being the bearer of black and white joy at a time when alvinegro football lived its worst moment, in the midst of 23 years of fasting. If the lawn team won nothing, the one that had Wlamir on the court won three editions of the Brazilian (1965, 1966 and 1969), five of Paulista (1964, 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969), seven of Paulistano (1964, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969 and 1970) and three of the South American (1965, 1966, 1966 and 1969).
The most emblematic game, however, was not even worth title. In 1965, the then two -time European champion Real Madrid visited South America and played against Corinthians at Parque São Jorge. Wlamir had to take injections to contain an allergic reaction that prevented him from opening his eyes and scoring at least 40 points – statistical care was not the current one, and the wing itself said it had noted 51 – in the black and white victory by 118 to 109.
“It was the biggest basketball game I made in my life,” summarized the flying record, another of the nicknames of the Emeritus of St. Vicente who stuck roots in the park, where he will be eternal neighbor of Neco, Luizinho and Socrates. The boy jumped the wall.
