“Whitey Budrun, basketball Great, lives in Door County” from the December 28, 1965 Door County Advocate
Whitey Budrun, basketball Great, lives in Door County
By JIM ROBERTSON
Few Door county sports fans are aware that a Hall of Fame basketball player is living in their midst, a player who once made Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” and who can lay claim to being the originator of the hook and one handed shots.
He is Walter “Whitey” Budrun, who in 1931 was an All-American and made Ripley’s cartoon series for scoring nine points in 55 seconds, who astonished players and fans of his time with his one-handed shooting, who masqueraded as a Lithuanian student on a team that in 1939 won the European championship and who in 1961 was named to the Marquette University all-time basketball team.
This fabulous basketball career, with the European part compared to nothing less than a “fairy tale” by its hero, was accomplished between 1928 and 1939 and was finally shattered by the storm troopers of Adolf Hitler when they marched into Poland, cancelling what might have been Whitey’s shiniest hour of them all—playing in the World Olympics.
Whitey had been scheduled to play with Lithuania in the 1940 Tokyo Olympics but Adolph Hitler changed all that when he started World War II and not only forced cancellation of the Olympics but sent Whitey packing for home.
“I often wonder what my life would have been,” Whitey says now. “I was getting set up to operate a big sports center in Lithuania, bowling alleys, golf course, the works, before I had to head for home.”
Back home Whitey went into coaching at his native Waukegan high school, coaching basketball for three years before he became grade school athletic director for the city. He stayed in Waukegan 20 years, then upon his retirement five years ago moved to Sturgeon Bay to run the orchard interests of his late father-in-law, W. I. (Farmer Bill) Lawrence. His wife is the former Margaret Lawrence and they have sold the orchard property for a real estate development and have bought the Fish Creek Motel. They are now vacationing in California.
Whitey’s fabulous basketball career did not start at Marquette University, it started back in grade school in 1922 when as a sixth grader he was the free throw specialist for his school’s eighth grade team. That was back in the days when one boy could shoot all the free throws and his skill at the line was to reflect in his winning the adult free throw championship of the Waukegan Recreation Department for 21 straight years, astonishing the latter day push shot artists with his old fashioned underhand free throws.
Although Whitey was later to be recognized by his old fashioned free throws, he was once known for his radical one-handed shooting when everybody used the two handed set shot. Whitey had reason for his revolutionary one handed shooting; a crooked left arm that forced him to shoot with his right. Naturally, the bad arm came from a fracture on the basketball court, one of an assortment of broken bones, sprains and other injuries which were when basketball was common a brutal contact game. “I’d shoot and down I’d go, Whitey recalls now.
Budrun remembers coming to Marquette from Waukegan and hearing Frank Murray, then the Marquette coach, telling him of his one-handed shooting, “You just don’t shoot that way.’’ But Whitey told him he couldn’t shoot any other way and soon established a reputation as a basketball freak. Johnny Kotz at Wisconsin was to later start a revolution in one-handed jump shooting to where today it’s the only shot used.
What about the hook, another shot pioneered by Budrun? Why don’t more players use this seemingly unstoppable shot today?
“I guess it’s because the one-handed jump is so much easier to learn and to use,” he answered. “You just look at the basket and fire away. One of the reasons I use the hook was that I had bad eyes and got used to using the floor lines, not the basket, to hook by.”
Whitey maintains that basketball shooting is all touch and wrist action. And practice. When kids today ask him what it takes to make a good shooter, Whitey gives just one answer, practice.
Whitey remembers grade school days on playgrounds shooting baskets and high school days when he sneaked into the high school on weekends and shot all day. At home he made a miniature bounding board on which he tacked a bottomless tin can and then had it on the foot of his bed, tossing a tennis ball at the can from his pillow before going to sleep at night.
How could this help for shooting on a floor with a heavy, leather ball a lot bigger than it is today and at a basket 10 feet high? “It’s the touch,” Whitey answered. “Anything to give you the touch.”
Whitey’s basketball career started on the playgrounds of Waukegan and took him through Waukegan high school, Marquette University, the early days of professional basketball at Sheboygan and Oshkosh and finally to Europe where he played two and a half years masquerading as a student for the University of Kaunas team in Lithuania that in 1939 won the European championship.
“We were getting ready for the Olympics at Tokyo the following year," Whitey said. "I was already worrying about an international scandal that might have developed had I played and they would have made a fuss over me really being an American. But Hitler never let it happen. I headed for home in September of 1939 and the Olympics were cancelled."
Whitey was recruited by Lithuania in 1937 in much the same manner athletes are recruited today. He had made a big name for himself at Marquette where he played from 1928 to 1931 and became known as one of the greatest scorers of his day, hitting an almost unheard of 20 points against Brigham Young in 1930. He made Ripley when he scored nine points in the first 55 seconds against Grinnell.
“I guess they would never have known it,” Whitey remembers, “but there was a timeout with the game only 55 seconds old and us ahead by nine points and they discovered that I had scored them all.”
The reputation, gained in his native land brought a contract from Lithuania to play and help coach the university team. “It seems like a fairy tale now, little girls throwing flowers in my path all that,” Whitey said of the team that lost only one game in two and a half years and in 1939 won the European championship.
Feted as a professional athlete is feted today, Whitey had access to the financial backing for a sports center that might have been as fabulous as his basketball career. Then Hitler started marching.
Whitey came home to live and for 20 years helped Waukegan boys learn basketball, not as glamorous as what his playing days had been or what his cancelled plans might have been but offering rewards that even Whitey himself cannot begin to measure.
AN ILLUSTRIOUS BASKETBALL career which has included Hall of Fame honors at Marquette University, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Column, and a European championship is remembered by Walter “Whitey” Budrun. Top picture shows Whitey in his playing days of Marquette University (1928-31). Note the big, heavy leather ball used in those days and the bandaged knee and ankle. Lower left shows a caricature of Whitey drawn by a European artist during the European Olympics. His name was Budrunas until shortened to Budrun. Lower right shows him as he is today, looking over some of his mementoes, Whitey is still a lean, vigorous 6-ft. 3-in. tall.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[A short bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vytautas_Budriūnas
Budrun, number 17, passing the ball with his team members: https://youtu.be/oaefUbFlX_8?feature=shared&t=137
Much of the video of the 1939 European Basketball Championship game.
EuroBasket 1939: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroBasket_1939 ]
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