The name Alexander Gomelsky might not mean much in the United States or Canada, but in Russia, it carried the status of an Arnold "Red" Auerbach or William "Red" Holzman in the United States.

"Papa," as he was called in European basketball circles, died this past August at the age of 77, in Moscow, from cancer.

Gomelsky was the legendary Russian-Jewish coach who played a major role in raising the Soviet Union into a feared international powerhouse, and, although he wasn’t present, prepared the Soviet Olympic team basketball team to win its first Olympic gold medal in 1972. Overall, in 40-plus years of coaching, he led his Soviet club teams to five European championships and the Soviet national team to eight European Championships and one World Championship.

For all his glory, Gomelsky lived a life under the gun of the Russian Secret Police, the dreaded KGB.

"The KGB thought I would go (defect) to Israel. I saw documents that showed KGB believed I would leave," Gomelsky told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. "In Israel, I was very popular. Not many Israel coaches have same results as Gomelsky, and KGB knew this. KGB does not like Jewish man coaching Russian national team. Government does not like Jewish men. I have lots of enemies."

Great talent and leadership not withstanding, Gomelsky suffered several setbacks in his career simply because of the religion issue. After coaching Riga to five Soviet club titles, he moved up to take over the leadership of CSKA, the Red Army club. It was while coaching CSKA that his legend began to take shape. He guided the club to European titles in 1969 and 1971. But despite his constant run of success, it didn’t translate to love, acclaim, or promotion with the powers in the USSR, at least until 1976, when he was appointed head coach of the Soviet National team and lasted in this capacity for 12 years. He had held the position twice before, 1958-60 and 1962-70, but was demoted both times. He believed the cause to be for one reason only, his religion.

In his final year (1988) on the sidelines as steward of the Soviet National team, Gomelsky did something no basketball coach in the world had done before him. He broke America’s all-powerful rulership of international basketball. His team eliminated the American’s in the semi-finals of the Seoul Olympics and went on to win the gold medal in the finals.

The American’s, all amateurs, had been viewed as unbeatable. As Carl Schreck of The Moscow Times, wrote, "The victory over the U.S. team, a collection of college stars led by future Hall of Fame center David Robinson (United States Naval Academy and the San Antonio Spurs of the National Basketball League), was widely seen as a turning point in international basketball. It showed the United States could no longer guarantee Olympic gold by putting amateurs on their Olympic team." Since that time, incidentally Gomelsky’s last season on the sidelines, the US has fielded teams composed of professional basketball players only.

As regards his off-court problems with the KGB, Sergei Belov, one of Gomelsky's star players for CSKA and the national team, said that his former coach's problems simply came with the territory. "All talented people, including artists and ballet dancers, had problems with the KGB," Belov said. "But he knew how to survive within the system."

Redemption for Gomelsky came only with Olympic gold in Seoul, as well as the victory over the Americans in the semifinal, Belov told Schreck. "The semifinal win was the culmination of his life's work."

Gomelsky's players said the genius of the diminutive and fiery coach lay in the way he prepared players psychologically rather than in tactical expertise.

Schreck also interviewed Sarunas Marciuluinis, who together with fellow Lithuanian stars Arvydas Sabonis and Rimas Kurtinaitis helped form the nucleus of the Soviet team, told him: "We weren't confident we could beat the Americans. But we had two days' rest before the semifinal, and he came to our rooms at night, telling each player two or three times that we could beat them."

NBA commissioner David Stern called Gomelsky "one of the greatest basketball coaches on the world stage."

"He will forever be remembered as the father of Soviet and Russian basketball," Stern said in a statement.

Even CIS President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences in a statement posted on the Kremlin web site Tuesday, and Vyacheslav Fetisov, head of the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, described Gomelsky's passing as a "loss for the entire sporting world," RIA-Novosti reported.

Gomelsky, survived by his wife and four sons, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 1995.