Modestas Paulauskas

Modestas "Iron Modė" Paulauskas He was a member of the Soviet Union team that won gold medal at the 1972 Summer Olympics and is now the last living player from the team.

In 1991, he was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players.

In 2021, he was included into the FIBA Hall of Fame.

Club career Paulauskas spent his whole club career with Lithuanian teams: Neptūnas Klaipėda, Atletas Kaunas, Žalgiris Kaunas, despite getting attention from teams based in Western Europe and the National Basketball Association (NBA). He could not join them due to various reasons, one of such is Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union at that time, and it was very hard to travel abroad USSR. The other reason was he never actually wanted to leave his homeland – Lithuania. He was also asked to join Žalgiris Kaunas's main rival, CSKA Moscow, but he declined.

Paulauskas, nicknamed "Iron Modė", would often score half points for his team even before the introduction of the three-point line.