How Fidel Castro Invented the Euro Step: A Brief Oral History

It should actually be called the Cuba Step

when you’re wondering whether to be magnanimous or tyrannical

In the aftermath of Fidel Castro’s recent death, many are debating his legacy, trying to determine once and for all whether he was a beacon of freedom and liberation or an authoritarian monster. But one aspect of his life remains criminally overlooked since his passing at the age of ninety, and that is his invention of one of basketball’s most well known and effective moves: the Euro Step. Thanks to the declassifying and publication of many documents assumed lost, we are now, for the first time, able to track the invention of the so-called Euro Step and the ideological conflicts it wrought.

Frederick Dyson, biographer of Cuban author Jose Marti: While Marti was not known as a fan of sports, he would occasionally employ metaphors from the athletic world in order to make his arguments and treatises more accessible to the common worker he cared so deeply about. In one of his early works, he wrote of the need for cunning by revolutionaries in order to evade imprisonment, likening their movements to how some footballers may step in one direction, leading their opponent to believe that they have shown their hand, but then immediately pivot, moving forward, but in the opposite direction as before. While Marti was of course referring to the guerrilla tactics necessary for revolutionary action, its impact was far more wide-ranging than that. Castro’s admiration for and desire to emulate Marti is well known so it should not surprise us that this admiration was not merely political. It is widely believed that this aforementioned passage is the one that, whether consciously or unconsciously, came to Castro’s mind as he invented what should really be called the Cuba Step.

Raul Castro: After we took power in 1959, Fidel would often unwind by playing basketball with some friends and advisers. I think it was around that time that he began to use what would come to be called the Euro Step. It wasn’t universally accepted though. Che, in particular, had some major issues with it for reasons I still struggle to fully grasp.

Journal Entry by Che Guevara, 12 December 1962

“In his frequent basketball matches, Fidel has started using a new move he simply calls ‘The Step.’ It is undeniably effective, yet is its goodness equally undeniable? As revolutionaries we must not merely pay attention to ends, but to means. I worry that this flash and pomp is not befitting of the revolutionary leader. It serves to separate him too much from those caught in the chains of a maudlin life, marred by oppression and economic strife. Yes, it leads to a basket, but at what cost to the communal spirit?”

when Che is open in the corner

Raul Castro: We all knew that Che was the more ideologically motivated of the two of them, but I’m not sure any of us realized just how big the gap between him and Fidel was, before this. Many of us thought, ‘it’s just a basketball move,’ but Che saw it as indicative of a straying from revolutionary means. I’m not sure many of us really understood how he got there. It was a big point of contention though.

In the 1960s, many leftists and civil rights activists such as Stokely Carmichael and Robert F. Williams made trips to Cuba in addition to several other representatives from nations around the world. It is widely assumed that it was through these meetings that Castro’s innovation spread throughout the world as visitors to Cuba returned home with greater knowledge of Caribbean economics and cutting edge basketball technique, both. Glimpses of what would become known as the Euro Step where seen as early as the 1960s and 70s when it was utilized by Elgin Baylor, Archie Clark, and Julius Erving, though it was only in recent years that it became popularized by international players such as Sarunas Marciulionis and Manu Ginobili and native born Americans like James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and Dwyane Wade. Now, with this new information, many NBA players are forced to grapple with the history of their preferred go-to move.

Russell Westbrook: Who invented it? I don’t care about that. It’s mine now.

Spencer Hawes: People seem to think I don’t do the Euro Step because I’m not athletic enough, but the real reason is that I refuse to pay homage to such a “bad hombre.”

Manu Ginobili: Growing up in Argentina, we knew who Castro was, but our knowledge was a bit less than it could have been. Remember this was before high speed internet and Wikipedia and what not. We always looked up a bit more to Che as he was our native son, although I do think that he was wrong regarding the validity of the Euro Step. Of course, Castro was wrong to strip human rights from so many. I know you can’t fully divorce this move from its origins, but having said that I believe that it does not belong to Castro or to any other single person as it is now the possession of all who love basketball and all who use it to split the defense, creating an open lane to the basket.

Gregg Popovich: As a symbol, Castro was undeniably great, representing hope and freedom to many Latin Americans who resented the United States’ hegemony in the region and how it was attained through economic and political machinations that paid infinitely more attention to American interests than Latin lives. However, Castro was not a symbol, but a man and as a man, he has much to answer for. His invention of the Euro Step means that his legacy will always be tied up with that of the NBA’s, but thankfully, this innovation is far less ambiguous than perhaps any other aspect of his legacy. Whatever else may be said about him, he changed the game.