Petar Skansi

Petar Skansi (23 November 1943 – 4 April 2022) was a Croatian professional basketball player and coach.

During his playing career, he played for Jugoplastika and Maxmobili Pesaro.

Born in the Sumartin village, on the island of Brač, to Navy Captain Petar and teacher mother Marija, Skansi graduated from the Split streamlined maritime high school in 1961.

Simultaneously, he took up water polo, playing it in the Jadran Split youth system.

Skansi first played club basketball with the Yugoslav League club Jugoplastika, where he played from 1964 to 1972.

With Yugoslavia, he won numerous medals at the major FIBA tournaments, including: the silver medal at the 1965 EuroBasket, the silver medal at the 1967 FIBA World Championship, the silver medal at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics, and the gold medal at the 1970 FIBA World Championship.

He also won the gold medal at the 1967 Mediterranean Games.

He was a member of the Yugoslavia national team that silver medalled at the 1968 Summer Olympics.

After Yugoslavia won the gold medal at the 1970 FIBA World Championship, Skansi was named the Croatian Athlete of the Year.

He was a member of the FIBA European Selection in 1971, and he was the EuroLeague Finals Top Scorer in 1972.

Skansi was also a member of the Yugoslav national basketball team.

He then played with the Italian league club Maxmobili Pesaro, from 1972 to 1973.

Skansi became coach-player at Jugoplastika in the season 1973–74 and he remained in that status until his retirement from playing basketball in 1976.

Then he continued his career in basketball only as head coach.

In his first season as coach-player, Skansi led Jugoplastika in the semifinals of 1973–74 FIBA Korać Cup where his team was eliminated hardly by Partizan (97–108 loss in Belgrade and 85–75 win in Split).

Also in the same season they won the Yugoslav Basketball Cup (92–85 against Crvena zvezda) and Jugoplastika ranked second in the First Federal Basketball League.

In 1974–75 season, still as coach-player of Jugoplastika, he led his team in the semifinals of 1974–75 FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup where his team was eliminated by the defending champions Crvena zvezda (88–76 win in Split and 63–81 loss in Belgrade).

In the domestic competitions Jugoplastika reached the final of Yugoslav Basketball Cup but lost to Crvena zvezda and in the First Federal Basketball League once again ranked second behind the champion Zadar.

In 1975–76 season his last as player alongside coach, Skansi won his first European trophy the FIBA Korać Cup in a double final against the Italian club Chinamartini Torino.

In the domestic league he led Jugoplastika in the second place.

Having taken over in 1975 and invested heavily since, the club's financial backer who made his wealth manufacturing and selling kitchen appliances was looking for elusive domestic league success.

After that, he returned to Jugoplastika, where he remained until he retired from playing basketball, in 1976.

The next year (1976–77) Skansi retired as player and continued his career in the city of Split as head coach of the Dalmatian club.

This season was maybe his best over all his coaching career because he led his team in the success of the small Triple Crown after the winning of the FIBA Korać Cup (against Alco Bologna), the Yugoslav Cup (against Kvarner) and the First Federal Basketball League.

In 1977–78 season Petar Skansi led Jugoplastika as Yugoslav champion in the Semifinals group stage of FIBA European Champions Cup where they ranked 5th with a 5 wins–5 losses record.

In the end of the season he left the club.

In summer 1981, having spent the previous four years coaching in various capacities within the Yugoslav national team system, Skansi returned to club coaching by accepting the offer from Victoria Libertas (Scavolini), an ambitious and financially stable club from Pesaro backed by entrepreneur Valter Scavolini who also performed the club president role.

Giving further indication of Scavolini's ambitions in summer 1981 was the simultaneous acquisition of 28-year-old European superstar Dragan Kićanović from Partizan whom Skansi knew well from coaching him in the Yugoslav national team.

Players Skansi inherited included talented young power forward Walter Magnifico, shooting guard / small forward Mike Sylvester, and mainstay forward Giuseppe Ponzoni.

Skansi's 1981 head coaching appointment at Scavolini, by his own admission, owed a lot to fellow Yugoslav Aleksandar Nikolić's coaching success in Italy throughout the 1970s that opened doors in Italian league to other Yugoslav coaches such as Skansi and Bogdan Tanjević.

Playing in a fourteen-club Italian league, Skansi's Scavolini Pesaro finished the regular season top of the table with a 25–7 record thus getting the home court advantage throughout the playoffs.

It also ensured a bye in the initial round-of-sixteen playoff stage, which meant starting from the quarter-final stage where they swept Fabriano 2–0 in a best-of-three series.

The following round, the semifinals, brought Sinudyne Bologna, a much tougher test, and the series went to the deciding game three where Scavolini eked out a hard-fought 88–87 win on their home court in Pesaro.

In the final, they faced Dan Peterson's Billy Milano, losing the home court advantage right away by dropping the opening game 86–89 on their home court; Olimpia won game two in Milan, 73–72, to take the title.

Ahead of the 1982–83 season, on Skansi's insistence, Scavolini Pesaro management signed 28-year-old center Željko Jerkov, another compatriot Skansi knew well from the Yugoslav national team as well as from Jugoplastika.

With a formidable looking starting five of Kićanović, Sylvester, Ponzoni, Magnifico, and Jerkov, as well as the previous season's experience, the goal of winning the league was now even more of an objective than the year before.

He was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991.

After his retirement from playing basketball, in recognition of his playing career, he was named to the FIBA's 50 Greatest Players list, in 1991.

For his basketball achievements, he was awarded the Franjo Bučar State Award for Sport twice, in 1992 and 2003.

He also had a political stint as a deputy minister of sports in Croatia.