Business by concepts, attacks, swearing and bonuses in dollars. Sport tells the criminal story of the formation of one of the strongest clubs in Russian basketball, the head coach and president of which was an obsessed man Anatoly Sukhachev, nicknamed Basmach.
Murder
In 2003, an unknown person shot the boss of Mineralnye Vody Lokomotiv point-blank as he left a cafe in his hometown. There he once played basketball, worked as a truck driver and succeeded in the transport business. They say that he also enjoyed authority in certain circles of the city, which was then called Criminal Waters.
Then Anatoly Sukhachev was saved. During a ten-hour operation, doctors removed four bullets with a displaced center of gravity. The attackers were never found, but after that he left basketball forever, and then life.
Basmach did not survive the second assassination attempt. In January 2006, he was shot dead as he was leaving his cafe, «U Sashi», where he was relaxing with his wife and children. Two young men in hoods entered the establishment and fired ten bullets from pistols at point-blank range. The ambulance team arrived very quickly, but Sukhachev died without regaining consciousness. The main version of the murder is commercial activity, in no way connected with basketball.
Local crime reporters even named a group that had settled scores with a competitor. Its leader was a certain Valery Popov. This gang was responsible for the murders of Pyatigorsk entrepreneurs, authoritative Stavropol businessmen, and even an adviser to the governor of Stavropol Krai and the executive secretary of the admissions committee of the Pyatigorsk Technological University.
A favorite of journalists, a scourge of judges
Organizing a Russian basketball championship after the collapse of the USSR was much more difficult than in hockey or handball. In these sports, teams from regional centers of the RSFSR played in the USSR championships, and in basketball, only Sverdlovsk «Uralmash» and Kuibyshev «Stroitel» flashed like meteors in the major league. In fact, only Moscow's CSKA and «Dynamo» and Leningrad «Spartak» competed with the teams of the union republics.
In Soviet times, there was a team called «Lokomotiv» in Mineralnye Vody, which played without any particular achievements in the RSFSR championship and departmental competitions. In his youth, Sukhachev played for it, not considering sport his life's work. Then he set up a profitable transport business, and in 1996 he returned as the head coach and president of his native «Lokomotiv». At first, Sukhachev had enough of his own funds to finance the team.
Nowadays, at the most boring press conferences after VTB United League matches, where you can't even expect a translation of the foreign coaches' remarks, Sukhachev's fiery briefings are often recalled. «Guys, do you know why I love you?» he addressed journalists. «You teach me how to manage a team. You consider me an equal. But our coaches don't consider me as such. After all, they studied at physical education institutes, received honors diplomas, and I attended four training sessions with Vladimir Petrovich Kondrashin and learned more about coaching than they did. And I beat them with my guys.»
Unlike journalists, coaches and especially referees of the top league were afraid of Sukhachev. At the game in St. Petersburg, in which Spartak snatched victory from Lokomotiv by one point in the end, the head coach of the Mineralnye Vody team caught up with Moscow referee Vladimir Dadugin on the way to the locker room and, as was later noted in the official press release of the Russian Basketball Federation, compiled by the current president of PBC CSKA Andrey Vatutin, threatened physical violence. Sukhachev was fined 500 dollars, but Spartak suffered much more. The club from St. Petersburg was issued a fine of three thousand «greenbacks» for failure to ensure the safety of the refereeing team. «Where are we going to get that kind of money? Our players have not been paid for two months!» one of Spartak's leaders lamented. They found it. Without it, the team would have been removed from the competition.
At one of the pre-season tournaments, Sukhachev did not like the refereeing of referee Sergei Bulanov from Ulyanovsk. He ran onto the field with the determination to sort things out – and smelled alcohol. He immediately wrote a report to Moscow, but his colleagues «cleaned» Bulanov up. Chief referee Vladimir Obukhovsky reported that even before the start of the tournament, Bulanov informed that he was treating neuralgia with alcohol-containing ointments.
«Let the Americans go to ***!»
In addition to journalists, Sukhachev respected agents, who at that time had just appeared in the Russian basketball business. «We met Sukhachev when I worked at UNICS,» said the famous agent Burkhan Nazirov. «Together with my future partner in this business, we were doing pre-game shows. The Mineralnye Vody team arrived late for the game. It was necessary to agree with the head coach of Lokomotiv on the issue of the introduction of the teams lasting not three minutes, as stipulated by the regulations, but ten and being a show. Sukhachev looked at us menacingly and said: «Basketball is not a show. And go with your show…» The address to which he sent us is well known to all Russians.»As Nazirov recalls, the next time he and Sukhachev talked was when Burkhan began working on recruiting foreign players for Russian clubs. Of all the coaches, only Ivan Edeshko from Irkutsk's Shakhtyor, Vladimir Rodionov from Saratov's Avtodor, and Sukhachev believed in him and his partner. In other clubs, no one took the 20-year-old guys from Kazan, who had contact with serious foreign agents thanks to their knowledge of a foreign language, seriously.
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«Our first legionary landing in Mineralnye Vody consisted of three basketball players, and then in one of the seasons there were seven of them,» the Kazan agent noted. «The first conversation with Sukhachev was short and dry, he sent me to his assistant Igor Sergeyev. And unexpectedly, one evening, Anatoly Aleksandrovich called me himself on the home phone (there were no mobile phones back then). The call was at 11 pm and really scared my grandmother. Calling me over, she said: «Some very formidable man is asking for you.» We talked for about 45 minutes. I don't know how this conversation affected Sukhachev, but something changed in our relationship.»
After that, many Americans and «Southerners» appeared at Lokomotiv, who were brought in by Nazirov and his partner. «What's most interesting is that Anatoly Aleksandrovich perceived me not as an agent, but as a trusted person. Of course, he didn't speak or read English, but he checked all the information about the proposed players. He had a peculiar financial relationship with me and my partner. He paid well for a good player, and if he wasn't suitable, he didn't pay at all. There was an interesting case with Alexander Gutorov. When he came to Lokomotiv, Sukhachev said: «Did you guarantee him that I would pay him a salary? Although you get a bonus for bringing him in,» Nazirov said.For the most star legionnaire who played in Mineralnye Vody, Tanoku Byrd, only an American agent was paid. With NBA star Cedric Ceballos, who arrived with an excess weight of 20 kilograms, of which he lost 18 in a month of training, there was a more cheerful story. Sukhachev said: «There is no money now, but tell the American agents to go …».
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«In general, to the same place where he sent us in Kazan at our first meeting, and my partner and I thought for a long time about how to translate this to the Americans,» Nazirov said. «We sometimes heard a familiar address, too. There was a Lebanese basketball player, Fadi El-Khatib, whom we wanted to engage in Lokomotiv. We tried to persuade him for two weeks, but we couldn't persuade him. We flew to Moscow, where Lokomotiv was playing CSKA, went into the hall and reported the progress of the negotiations to Sukhachev. He looked at us menacingly and said: «Why did you come without the Lebanese? Go …» We already knew the address well. Five minutes later, after a smoke, Anatoly Alexandrovich invited us to sit next to the team bench. Despite his menacing appearance and peculiar manner of speech, Sukhachev was a basketball man through and through, and I have the kindest memories of him.»
At first, Sukhachev combined the positions of president and head coach of Lokomotiv, but the more significant the successes became (the Mineralnye Vody club reached the bronze medals of the Russian championship and was the first Russian team to play in the final of the European Cup, losing to the French Nancy on aggregate), the more time and effort administrative work required. Lithuanian specialists appeared on the coaching bench: first Rutenis Paulauskas, then Rimas Girskis.
«A fight? Brilliant! The bonus is a thousand dollars»
Under the leadership of Girskis, Lokomotiv played at the pre-season tournament in Turkey. Sukhachev was relaxing in the casino at that time. After calling Girskis to find out how they played, Sukhachev learned about a fight that happened during the match. In this battle, Igor Kudelin, who was not distinguished by his heroic dimensions, put the powerful center Asim Pars on the floor. After this, the teams went wall to wall. “Brilliance!” Sukhachev responded. “Everyone gets a thousand dollar bonus!”
An interesting story was recalled by Valentin Kubrakov, a participant in the Sydney Olympics. In the 1999/2000 season, he played for Lokomotiv and represented Mineralnye Vody in the national team, which was led by Stanislav Eremin. «In the Korac Cup playoffs, Lokomotiv played against Virtus from Rome and beat a strong Italian team with a three-point difference at home, where American legionnaires predominated,» Kubrakov said. «The Italians were shocked, both by the school hall where we played and by the hotel, where there was no hot water. When we arrived for the return match, we were the ones in shock: a huge palace for 15,000 spectators, a locker room half the size of our game hall! Sukhachev decided to get us ready for the game. He came to the locker room with a tape recorder and turned on Vladimirsky Central. The Russian guys understood everything, but the legionnaires asked to translate the words and explain what it meant.» True, the psychological trick did not help. Lokomotiv lost the return match with a difference of -27.
The founder of Lokomotiv, thanks to his sociability, and perhaps other qualities that he preferred not to talk about, knew how to win people over. At a time when there was no money in Russian basketball and none was expected, he attracted the head of the city administration Vladimir Katrenko, who later became deputy chairman of the State Duma, and the Minister of Railways Nikolai Aksenenko, who later became deputy prime minister, to finance the team. FIBA banned European Cup matches in the small and cramped hall in Mineralnye Vody, and the Russian Basketball Federation also raised the issue of decent arenas. So Lokomotiv had to hold home matches in Rostov-on-Don.
Sukhachev started building a complex in Mineralnye Vody in the most prestigious place, from the entrance to the city from Pyatigorsk. According to the idea of the president of Lokomotiv, a sports complex was to appear there, including a basketball court with stands for 3.5 thousand spectators (more is not needed for a city with a population of 70 thousand), a swimming pool, a fitness center and a hotel. They even wanted to involve Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov in financing the project, but in 2002 the construction stalled. Sukhachev's patrons lost their positions. Until recently, the unfinished complex, which was popularly nicknamed the «Coliseum», stood and created a security threat to the city's residents. Only now the governor of Stavropol Vladimir Vladimirov decided to demolish the unfinished building.
In 2003, Lokomotiv finally relocated from Mineralnye Vody to Rostov-on-Don, and then moved to Krasnodar. Sukhachev was pushed aside. He tried to revive the team in his hometown as a farm club for Rostov or simply register it in one of the lower Russian leagues. Only in 2006 did the life of the coach and functionary, thanks to whom today our basketball has Lokomotiv-Kuban, end.
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