Basketball On The Internet.

LOJZI Ugody pestered me almost daily through the summer holidays of my 11th year, determined to get me on a basketball court to teach me a jumpshot.

Like any dill of a kid, I wanted my “holidays” from the rigours and unrelenting demands of primary school, to remain pristine.

In other words, I didn’t want to learn or be taught anything, frankly, and certainly not before those Bata Ponytail school shoe ads came on the TV a couple of weeks before the new school year was about to begin. You know the ones, with the shoes that had tiny footprints of animals on one sole and what those animals were on the other. OK. Maybe you won’t remember.

But Lojzi – pronounced Loy-zee – was insistent and, a schoolteacher himself so also on holidays, when he came over for lunch one day, had me trapped knowing I had no plans for that afternoon.

Not that us 11-year-olds made huge plans back then anyway; catch the midday movie, pretend to be Errol Flynn in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” all afternoon, have a sandwich, get ready for dinner.

BUDAPEST MENTOR: Loyzi Ugody, right, with one of his young players.

Given we had a halfcourt in our backyard – that’s right, I didn’t even have to go to a stadium – it took him hardly anytime at all to teach me the technique and, honestly, I was eternally grateful.

So before the shadows of 2015 disappear completely as the sun on 2016 continues to glow, it would be timely to remember how important volunteers and entertainers are to our sport.

We lost a few towards the end of last year and while names such as Lojzi Ugody and Gunars Eizens Berzzarins (or G.E.B. as many of us knew him)  may not mean much to those outside South Australia, Meadowlark Lemon most probably will.

For a couple of decades, Meadowlark was nicknamed the “clown prince” of basketball as the drawcard of the Harlem Globetrotters.

SUPER TALENT: Meadowlark Lemon was an entertainer but an exceptional basketballer.

The Trotters’ role in the global acceptance and appreciation of basketball never should be underplayed or underestimated.

They were touring the world playing indoors and out, bringing their entertainment literally to millions and Lemon was right there at the forefront of it, as good a basketball player as one of the all-time greatest, Wilt Chamberlain, had ever seen.

They played Adelaide’s tennis stadium, Memorial Drive, on a portable outdoor court in the early 60s, delighting and enlightening thousands, long before they ever played the Apollo Stadium or Adelaide Arena.

For the uninitiated who saw a Globetrotters game, then went to find the real thing, basketball – played seriously – was quite the shock.

Meadowlark left us last month, at the age of 83. He may have been able to get his Harlem Globetrotters onto and off Gilligan’s Island, but even this super-talented athlete and entertainer couldn’t outfox Father Time.

He helped many of us to love this game, bringing wide-eyed youngsters to our great sport.

Once there though, it was volunteers such as Loyzi who taught them to love the game.

He certainly taught that to me, as he had to my brothers, who, like other Hungarian migrants, he drew to the Budapest Basketball Club he started in the mid-50s.

Loyzi was a character for sure, winning many decorations and medals for his war service during World War II when he served, of all bleak places, on the Russian Front.

On his way home from teaching at Norwood, he often would call by our home and regale us with stories on his two favourite topics – tales of heroic battles, or the wonders of basketball.

He successfully recruited two superstar Hungarian basketballers, John and Les Hody, to Budapest and a dynasty was born in South Australia.

Loyzi played on into his 50s with the club, still active in the lower divisions long after Budapest merged with Norwood, which today still recognises its Hungarian heritage and its legacy.

Few even know the story of this winemaker and hot parika grower, or of how much he contributed to the sport in Adelaide, and it is similar for Berzzarins.

A recipient of an OAM in the 2012 Australia Day honours for his service to the Latvian community, and to the sport as an administrator and journalist, “G.E.B” was one of my predecessors as a basketball writer for The Advertiser newspaper.

SA LEGENDS: Gunars Berzzarins, right, interviewing another SA basketball icon, Frank Angove.

He worked for Latvian-language newspapers and no basketball exploit by any Latvian in Australia escaped his notice or his reporting.

Whether it was the Cecins brothers in Perth, the Dancis, Zarins or Blicavs clans in Adelaide, or a Maris Jaunalksnis running around in Newcastle, if the sportsperson was Latvian, Berzzarins was chronicling what this new generation was achieving in Australia.

Jovial, knowledgable and spritely, G.E.B. annually surprised all at the Latvian Balls, with some pretty new woman on his arm, a twinkle in his eye and the appropriate toupee for the occasion.

Like Loyzi, Gunars would largely be unknown outside his club and his ethnicity, but his fairmindedness and enthusiasm cannot be duplicated. The two of them would be having a great conversation somewhere in the afterlife, Loyzi probably complaining Meadowlark is shuffling his feet and travelling, with the world becoming too blasé about this basic basketball rule.

Many of us will miss them all – old schoolers who helped launch and make the game great. They may be gone but their legacies live on in the many wonderful volunteers who keep the sport moving forward.

We should never take them for granted.