Oscar Daniel Bezerra Schmidt – Nicknamed; Mão Santa (Holy Hand)
Must watch: ‘Only Live For The Love of The Game’, Oscar Schmidt Hall of Fame Speech. It was a good life. Listen carefully, filter through his English as his 4th Language difficulties. He renders the emotions recalling his Brazilian youth only wanting to play basketball, and how he first encountered his wife. Oscar played professionally 26 seasons, until he was 45 years-of-age. The last word was, ‘Oscar’ remains in the game coaching youth basketball.
Brazilian Basketball Legend
Oscar Daniel Bezerra Schmidt – Nicknamed; Mão Santa (Holy Hand)
Must watch: ‘Only Live For The Love of The Game’, Oscar Schmidt Hall of Fame Speech. It was a good life. Listen carefully, filter through his English as his 4th Language difficulties. He renders the emotions recalling his Brazilian youth only wanting to play basketball, and how he first encountered his wife. Oscar played professionally 26 seasons, until he was 45 years-of-age. The last word was, ‘Oscar’ remains in the game coaching youth basketball.
Warning: You May Start To Samba Dance if You Remain of This Website.
Fat Hat Collectibles is presenting Sports the Brazilian Way. … … … What’s the Brazilian way to watch sports, turn on soccer/football/futbol on the TV, without commentary and no sound. Listen to relaxing Brazilian Music in the background. Watch how fluid the athletes move. Try it, here, now, you might enjoy it. Simply click the Brazilian Cafe’ Music video button (located above) to the on position, then scroll. It’s been known to make the wife happy as well.
Watch the great athletes ‘dance’ below.
All other videos should be in motion but muted while watching.
Hope you make it to the bottom of this page to enjoy our tribute to the ‘Brazilian’ icon, Great Sports Superstar and lifetime Sports Memorabilia contributor and creator, ‘Oscar”
The website Brazilian musicturn off switch is in the new ‘Oscar’s Collector’s Tribute Section’. Oscar took control of the remote control. It’s in his hands now … … … we hope he doesn’t try to toss it from 40 feet away, just like many of his basketball shots he took on the court for 45 years. It’s Oscar’s weekend on FatHatCollectibles.com
Oscar Daniel Bezerra Schmidt (born February 16, 1958), nicknamed Mão Santa (Holy Hand), is a Brazilian retired professional basketball player. Schmidt primarily played the power forward and small forward position, was 2.06 m (6 ft 9 in) tall and weighed 109 kg (240 lbs). Along with his home country, Schmidt also played in Italy for JuveCaserta and Pavia, and Spain for Fórum Valladolid.[1] He was born in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
Schmidt played youth club basketball in the youth systems of S.E. Palmeiras and Mackenzie College. With Palmeiras’s youth teams, he scored 2,114 points in 85 games, for a scoring average of 24.9 points per game. With Mackenzie’s youth teams, he scored 1,332 points in 36 games, for a scoring average of 37.0 points per game.
In 1978, he moved to the Brazilian club E.C. Sírio under coach Cláudio Mortari who signed him. As a member of Sírio, Schmidt won the São Paulo State Championship in both 1978 and 1979, and the Brazilian Championship in 1979. He scored 40 points in the 1979 final (held in January 1980) and help Sirio win the title against Francana.[5] With Sírio, he also won the South American Club Championship, and the FIBA Intercontinental Cup title in 1979. He scored 42 points in the 1979 FIBA Intercontinental Cup‘s Final against the Yugoslav First Federal League club Bosna Sarajevo.[6] Schmidt was the top scorer of the Brazilian Championship in both 1979 and 1980.
In 1982, Schmidt joined the Brazilian club América do Rio. However, he only stayed with the club for a brief amount of time.[7]
JuveCaserta
For the 1982–83 season, Schmidt joined the Italian 2nd Division club JuveCaserta. With JuveCaserta, he played in the first division level Italian League, for the first time in the 1983–84 season being the leading scorer of the Serie A with 955 points in 34 games. That same season, Schmidt played in a Pan-European club competition for the first time, as he also played in Europe’s third-tier level FIBA Korać Cup‘s 1983–84 season. Schmidt played in Europe’s 2nd-tier level competition, the FIBA European Cup Winners’ Cup (later renamed to FIBA Saporta Cup), for the first time, in the 1984–85 season.
Schmidt led the Italian top division in scoring six times, while he was a member of JuveCaserta (1983–84, 1984–85, 1985-86, 1986–87, 1988–89, and 1989–90 seasons). JuveCaserta eventually retired Schmidt’s #18 jersey.
Pavia
In 1990, Schmidt joined the Italian 2nd Division club Pavia. With Pavia, Schmidt led the Italian 2nd Division in scoring, in both the 1990–91 and 1992–93 seasons. With Pavia, he also led the first division Italian League in scoring, during the 1991–92 season scoring 1760 pts in 40 games (44.0 average). He was also a member of the FIBA European Selection in 1991.
As a member of Pavia, Schmidt also had his highest scoring single game in the top division Italian League, as he scored 66 points in a 1991–92 season game versus Auxilium Torino, on 30 November 1991.[9][10] Pavia eventually retired his #11 jersey.
While playing club basketball in Italy, Schmidt earned a fan in future NBA star Kobe Bryant. At that time, Bryant was a young child that was living in Italy, while his father, Joe Bryant, played professional basketball in the country. Bryant called Schmidt one of his childhood idols,[11] and also stated that Schmidt could have been one of the greatest players in the NBA, if he had played in the league.[12]
Schmidt also spent the 1994–95 season with Valladolid. In that season, he averaged 24.0 points per game, in 38 games played. His single-game scoring high in the Spanish League, was in a game that season versus Málaga, in which he scored 47 points, and made all 8 of his 3-point field goal attempts.[14]
In two seasons in the Spanish ACB, Schmidt scored a total of 2,009 points in 71 games played (regular season and playoffs), for a scoring average of 28.3 points per game.[15]
With Corinthians Paulista, he won the Brazilian Championship in 1996. He was the second scorer in the 1996 São Paulo State Championship averaging 32.2 points[17] and the topscorer in 1997 with 41.9 points per game. During the 1997 National championship he would surpass the mark of 40,000 career points after scoring 41 in a game against Barueri/Bandeirantes.
As a member of Grêmio Barueri Bandeirantes, he won the São Paulo State Championship in 1998, averaging 33.3 points. It was the first in the club’s history while Oscar became a Paulista champion again, after 19 years (then with Sirio, in 1979). With Grêmio Barueri Bandeirantes, Schmidt, at the age of 39, scored 74 points in a São Paulo State Championship game on 28 November 1997.[18][19][20]
Flamengo
On September 8, 1999 he debuted for Flamengo in a comfortable victory over Municipal and got a standing ovation by the fans. On December 1, 1999, with a free throw, he reached the historic mark of 43,000 career points. On November 30, 2000, he reached 45,000 career points during the Flamengo-Botafogo game (118-107) in the Rio de Janeiro State Championship.[21]
As a member of Flamengo, he won the Rio de Janeiro State Championship in 1999 being the top scorer with 647 pts. He also led Flamengo to the National Finals finishing runners-up, a distinction that the club never had before 1999. Two years later, on April 8, 2001 he came a step closer to become basketball’s leading scorer, after he scored 34 pts in the Flamengo-Fluminense match (92-90) for the National league and he reached 46,014 career points.[22]
On October 27, 2001, he scored 44 pts in the Flamengo-Fluminense match (108-106) for the RJ State Championship and he finally surpassed the mark of 46.725 pts scored by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar becoming basketball’s all-timescorer.[23] Oscar had announced that he would retire on 16 May 2002, but a week after a controversial match in which COC/Ribeirao Preto coached by Lula Ferreira eliminated Flamengo in the National Championship quarterfinals (84-78) with Oscar being expelled by the referee, he took it back admitting to the press that he would play for one more year.[24] Eventuatlly, at the end of 2002 Schmidt helped Flamengo win the Rio de Janeiro State Championship.
Schmidt was the Brazilian Championship’s top scorer in each of his last eight seasons playing in the competition (1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003). That was in addition to the two times that he had previously led the same competition in scoring, in 1979 and 1980.
Schmidt retired from his club basketball playing career on May 26, 2003, at the age of 45, opting not to play in the upcoming Rio de Janeiro State Championship. His final game was against COC/Ribeirão on May 21, 2003. Flamengo then eventually retired his #14 jersey. Up to that day he had scored 49,703 points, then a world record though it was not recognised by FIBA officially.[25]
During his club playing career, Oscar scored a total of 42,044 points, in 1,289 games played, for a career scoring average of 32.6 points per game. He also scored a total of 236 points in All-Star Games. However, those totals do not include all of the games that he played in during his pro club career, as the data for some of the national cup games, Pan-European games, and all-star games that he played in Europe are not available.
NBA draft rights
Schmidt was drafted by the New Jersey Nets in the sixth round of the 1984 NBA draft, and he played with them in their 1984 NBA training camp and preseason. However, he declined the club’s offer of a fully guaranteed contract, because it was for considerably less money than he made at the time playing in Italy, and also because to accept the team’s contract offer would have meant that he could no longer represent the senior Brazilian national team. That was because until 1989, NBA players were not allowed to play for national teams.[26]
National team career
Junior national team
Schmidt played in the youth systems of Brazil’s national federation program. He played in 15 games with the junior selection of São Paulo, with which he scored 393 points in 15 games, for a scoring average of 26.2 points per game. He also played in 31 games with Brazil’s national junior selection, in which he scored a total of 569 points, for a scoring average of 18.4 points per game.
Senior national team
With the senior Brazil national team, Schmidt played in five Summer Olympics (he was the second player to do so after Teófilo Cruz) and was the top scorer in three of them. However, he never went past the tournament’s quarterfinals. In the 1980 Summer Olympics, he played in seven games and scored 169 points, for a 24.1 average.
He again scored 169 points in seven games in the 1984 Summer Olympics. His best Olympic performance was the 1988 Summer Olympics. At that tournament, he scored 338 points, for an average of 42.3 points per game. In 1992, he scored 198 points in eight games, and in 1996, he scored 219 points in 8 games. In 38 career Olympic basketball games, Schmidt scored a record of 1,093 points, for an average of 28.8 points per game.
In 1996, at the age of 38, Schmidt retired from playing with the senior Brazilian national team as its all-time leading scorer. While representing Brazil, he scored a total of 7,693 points in 326 games played, for a career scoring average of 23.6 points per game.[27] In 1997, Schmidt was given the Olympic Order award.
Post-athletic career
In 2004, Schmidt started his career in management. He was the CEO of “Telemar Rio de Janeiro”, a Brazilian professional basketball team which won the “Campeonato Carioca” (Rio de Janeiro State Championship) in 2004, and the Brazilian Championship in 2005.
In 2006, Schmidt, along with other Brazilian basketball greats such as Paula and Hortência, (another Hall of Fame member), led the NLB: Nossa Liga de Basquete (“our basketball league”), an attempted rival to the Brazilian Basketball Championship. However, the league folded a year later.
Personal life
Oscar is married since 1981 to Maria Cristina Victorino, and has a son Felipe, and a daughter, Stephanie.[28] Felipe played with Oscar in his last season in Flamengo before deciding to be a director.[29] His brother Tadeu Schmidt is a journalist, and his nephew Bruno Oscar Schmidt is a beach volleyballer.
On May 13, 2013, Schmidt had brain surgery to excise a malignant tumor.[30] At first, nobody knew about it except for his family. The press found out about the disease fifteen days after the surgery, at a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the two-time FIBA World Champion senior men’s Brazilian National Team. Schmidt did not appear at the event, as he was recuperating from daily chemotherapy sessions. The disease was later put into remission.[30]
13,957 points scored in the Italian League during his 11 seasons there. During the 1990-91 season he became the first player to score more than 10,000 points in the Italian Championship.
236 points scored in 11 career All-Star Games played where scoring data is available (21.5 points per game). 186 points scored in 7 Italian League All-Star Games played, 46 points scored in 3 ULEB All-Star Games played, and 4 points scored in the NBA All-Star Game (as a celebrity). Schmidt also played in the FIBA All-Star Game in 1991, but no individual points scored total is available for that game.
His best scoring record in the Spanish League was 47 points in the Unicaja Malaga – Forum Valladolid (99-101) on 27 November 1994, while on 19 March 1994 he had scored 11 three-pointers (Murcia – Forum Valladolid 96-87)[37]
With his 13,957 points in the Italian League remains the foreign player who scored the most, with an overall average of 34.6 points per game and game peaks of over 60 points, the first of which was recorded in 1984. He is the player who surpassed the 50 point mark the most times in the history of Italian basketball: he scored more than 50 pts in a single match 28 times out of 403 matches played (about 7%), ahead of Dražen Dalipagić (15/241 equal to 6.2%) and Joe Bryant (14/247, about 5.7%).[38]
He scored his Italian career high, with 66 points for Pavia (13/21 two-pointers, 11/26 three-pointers and 7/9 free throws) on November 30, 1991 during the home defeat against Torino (109-110).[39]
Gold (1977, 1983, 1985)
Bronze (1978)
Silver: (1979, 1981)
