Jaak Lipso

Jaak Lipso was an Estonian basketball player who competed for the Soviet Union. Lipso began playing basketball for TRÜ when he was 16. He played four seasons with the team, winning the Estonian Championship in 1958 and 1959. This was followed by a brief spell with Rīgas ASK in Soviet Latvia, before he spent eight years with CSKA Moscow. In that time he won two Euroleague titles (1963, 1969), and six USSR Premier Basketball League titles (1962–66, 1969). During the 1970s he played for Tallinna Kalev and Harju KEK, winning three more Estonian Championships (1971, 1974, 1979). Lipso was given an opportunity to play for the Boston Celtics in the United States, but Soviet rules at the time prevented him from moving to a professional club.

Lipso had amazing success representing the Soviet Union. At the European Basketball Championships he won three gold medals with the Soviet team (1963, 1965, 1967), and at the World Championships he won gold in 1967 and a bronze in 1970. Lipso also competed at two Olympic Games, winning silver at the 1964 Tokyo Games, and bronze at the 1968 Mexico City Games. Following his playing career he had a main role in the 1971 Soviet film Me, gamomdziebeli (The Investigator) and worked as a coach from 1976 to 1982. In 2010 he was inducted into the Estonian Basketball Hall of Fame.