Who is Lolita Lymoura?
Olympiakos player development coach Mike Kalavros recently revealed that a legend in Greek women’s basketball is half-Filipina. Her name is Lolita Lymoura and according to Kalavros, she was born in Piraeus, Greece and her mother is Filipina. “She’s a big-time women’s player, a legend,” said Kalavros during a coaching webinar organized by Blackwater sports director Ariel Vanguardia on zoom last Friday. “She has a Greek last name. There’s a big Filipino community in Greece. They do leagues all the time. I’ve seen the Filipinos play.”
Lymoura, 35, is a 5-11 combo guard who has played with the Greek national team since 2003, playing at the World Championships in the Czech Republic in 2010 and in Spain in 2018. Last season, she averaged 9.0 points, 7.0 rebounds and 6.6 assists in 25 games with PAOK Thessalonikis.
Unfortunately, Lymoura isn’t eligible to play for the Philippines. First, because she has no Philippine passport and if she did, FIBA requires it to have been issued before she turned 16 to be eligible to play for the Philippines as a local. And second, because she has played for Greece and under FIBA rules, a player may suit up for only one country in his or her lifetime. So she also wouldn’t qualify as a naturalized player.
The Gilas women’s team recruited a FilAm from UCLA, Kelli Hayes, for the recent Southeast Asian Games where coach Pat Aquino took the country’s first-ever gold medal in the competition. Hayes’ mother Lani Inciong is Filipina. Aquino previously tried to recruit Philippine-born Kelly Hardeman for the team and she would’ve been eligible as a local because of her place of birth. Hardeman, however, declined to give up her US citizenship which was a requirement for an American to receive a Filipino passport. Two Fil-Ams who previously suited up for the Philippine women’s team were Melissa Jacob and Sofia Roman.
Kalavros, 49, took up criminal justice at Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey but decided to pursue a basketball career specializing in player development and personal improvement. He was a head coach in Norway and New Zealand and an assistant coach under Dan Panaggio with the Shanghai Sharks in the Chinese league in 2012-13. “I’ve done just about everything in basketball,” he said. “But my special talent is working with players individually. Players come to me and I make them better. I don’t do defense. I work only on offense. If you’re a Division 3 player, I’ll make you better and get you to Division 2.”
In this pandemic, Kalavros said he’s never before experienced a “crazy” situation that has overwhelmed the world. “As often as I can, I talk to my players,” he said. “What they do is lift weights or run outside. Some of them, if they have place at home, they do some ballhandling. You’ve got to do something. Not being able to go to regular practice and shoot the ball in the hoop is killing them. But you have to find ways, it’s a challenge. In the end, if you have the character, you’ll get better. It’s what I tell my son, a basketball player, who’s almost 14. What can you do now? You can be the best ballhandler, a lot better than you were or you can improve your physical condition by running outside. So you’ve got to do the best you can under this situation.”
Kalavros said in talking to the players under his watch, he keeps things positive. “They try to be in the best shape possible until the gyms open again and we start practicing,” he said. “As a player development coach, first thing is you know the players very well. I don’t work on passing a lot. I work on making a player better offensively. If a guy’s a 10 point player a game, with the work we do, hopefully, I can make him an 18 point player. That translates to better money, better contract. In today’s game where scouting is everything, you know players on the opposing team inside out, better than they know themselves. Let’s say, you have a shooter who’s coming off a screen but it’s a problem when the switch puts a bigger and athletic player on defense. So I work on what he can do, to put the ball on the floor, how to get off a shot quicker, how to create. With young players, I build habits. With pros who’ve already established their identity, I work on something new in the summer, maybe one or two things, depending on the player.”