Javier Imbroda, together with José Antonio Paraíso, during a match with the Spanish team. /
The coach from Melilla had a complete career on the bench, culminating in the victory against the United States in the World Cup in Indianapolis
The sports career of Javier Imbroda (Melilla, January 8, 1961) has been complete. The coach from Melilla, born in Malaga by adoption, played all possible clubs since he started at Colegio La Salle until he took charge of the Spanish team. Those who knew him on a day-to-day basis in front of a team remember him as a great motivator for making human groups competitive in which good chemistry led to success. This is how that memorable stage in Maristas is explained, the effervescence experienced in Malaga with Unicaja, which he later managed to transfer to Seville with Caja San Fernando, and his good stage at the head of the national team and also the beautiful chapter starring with Lituana. Javier Imbroda passed away this Sunday in Malaga at the age of 61 after a long fight against cancer.
Imbroda arrived in Malaga in the mid-1980s recruited by his countryman Damián Caneda, another essential figure in Malaga basketball. He had just won the Andalusian Championship against the Marists with La Salle, precisely against Pedro Ramírez, who would be his assistant in the first team and a traveling companion on the road to the elite. Today there are surely many who had Imbroda as a gym teacher in that schoolyard on Calle de La Victoria.
He combined classes with the direction of a fantastic group of players who made history in Spanish basketball and who went from the Second Division to achieve promotion to the ACB. On May 4, 1988, Mayoral Maristas beat Caja San Fernando in Seville in a play-off and slipped into the national basketball elite. Not long ago, those who participated in that deed met again in the mythical school pavilion. That project conceived in the Malaga school rubbed shoulders with the best clubs in Europe. Imbroda was the visible head of a team that drew attention wherever it went for its daring basketball and in which a great generation of local players stood out, led by two aliens like Mike and Ray Smith. They were years of great rivalry with Caja de Ronda in which basketball unleashed passions in the city. When debts devoured Maristas, he was absorbed by the banking team and Imbroda became Unicaja’s coach. The best was yet to come.
A young Javier Imbroda gives instructions together with his assistant and friend Pedro Ramírez during the stage of Maristas. /
Before embarking on his long spell at Unicaja, Imbroda had the most picturesque experience of his life when he accepted the position of assistant coach of the Lithuanian team that was going to participate in the Barcelona Games in 1992. The Lithuanian cast for their first tournament as a country after independence from the USSR was formidable: Sabonis, Marciulionis, Valdemaras Homicius, Rimas Kurtinaitis, Arturas Karnisovas… His good relationship with Homicius and Sabonis, who had settled on the Costa del Sol, was key. They recruited Imbroda to be second to Vladas Garastas. Lithuania achieved first place in the Pre-Olympic held in Spain and then won the bronze at the Barcelona event.
Javier Imbroda celebrates with the Lithuanian team the bronze achieved at the Barcelona Games. /
After the success with Lithuania, once again the man from Melilla was the benchmark of the best stage of Malaga basketball or perhaps it should be pointed out that it was then that the city was able to look at the sport of the basket. That final against Barcelona in the 1994-1995 season confirmed Malaga’s thriving project and ratified him as one of the best coaches of the moment. The League was not won (because of that unforgettable and fateful triple by Mike Ansley), but the growth of the club was unstoppable. Imbroda spent ten seasons as coach of Unicaja in which he directed 268 games. His unquestionable legacy meant that on January 7 he was recognized with the Sports Star at the gates of the Martín Carpena.
What few expected, at least in Malaga, is that Imbroda would end up in the Caja San Fernando, because at that time, at the end of the 90s, the rivalry between the savings banks was enormous. Imbroda landed in Seville in a big way and in the first season the team was runner-up in the League and Cup. His stay at the club was shorter and lasted only three years to end up as the rosary of the Aurora and lawsuits in the courts. The coach said on his day that the interest of the Spanish Federation in hiring him as coach caused the club to make his life impossible. In fact, one day he arrived at the San Pablo pavilion and two security guards prevented him from entering.
Imbroda, during the famous press conference in which he denounced the harassment of Caja San Fernando. /
Indeed, the selection was the next destination of Javier Imbroda. The man from Melilla was chosen as a replacement for Lolo Sainz, of whom he had been an assistant since 1995, after the poor role played in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. And it was precisely he who made Pau Gasol debut with the senior team in preparation for the Turkey European Championship in 2001, in which Spain ended up winning the bronze medal. The following year, at the World Cup in Indianapolis, the team competed again at a high level and defeated the United States in the match for fifth place, a true milestone.
Real Madrid had already tried to recruit Imbroda when he signed for Caja San Fernando in 1998. Finally, the white club hired him as a replacement for Sergio Scariolo in 2002. Imbroda had to leave the position of coach due to that strange rule that prevents the coach from of a national team directing a team from the ACB League. Expectations at Real Madrid for the coach who had been settled for many years were high, but the experience was anything but positive. The white team had the worst season in its history to date, falling in the first round of the Euroleague and being left out of the ACB play-offs. In May 2003, the coach, who had a contract for the following seasons, was dismissed.
Javier Imbroda, together with Jorge Valdano on the day of his presentation as the new coach of Real Madrid. /
The experience at Real Madrid emotionally exhausted Imbroda, who decided to take a year off. He worked as a commentator for Spanish Television for the European Championship in Belgrade and did not train again until 2006, when he signed with the Grupo Capitol Valladolid. Both in the city of Pucelana and later in Menorca, with which he descended to the LEB, the experiences were not good. That’s where the stage of the coach Imbroda ended, although by then he had already started his facet as an entrepreneur. There was one last attempt to return to basketball, in this case as president of the ACB League. He walked all over Spain gathering support, but he stayed at the gates.
With his death, Spanish basketball loses one of the great coaches of recent decades and Malaga says goodbye to the man who undoubtedly epitomized the explosion of this sport in the city. Although in his last stage he was known for his political adventure, Javier Imbroda was and always will be a basketball coach.
