Frank Lubin

Who was Frank Lubin?

Frank John Lubin was an American-Lithuanian basketball player.

Lubin was born on the east side of Los Angeles, California, to a family of Lithuanian immigrants and died in Glendale, California. A veteran with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, Lubin was buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside, California.

Playing for the UCLA Bruins from 1928 to 1931, Lubin, a 6-foot 7-inch center, earned All-Pacific Coast Conference honors in his senior season. Following his college career, he joined the Twentieth Century Fox AAU team, which earned the right to represent the US as part of the first Olympic basketball tournament in 1936 in Berlin, winning the gold.

During the Olympics, Lubin was invited to come to Lithuania and became their first national coach. They won the EuroBasket title in 1937, using American-born players of Lithuanian heritage. When the team hosted the tournament in 1939, they again won the title, this time with Lubin playing and coaching. Lubin was named MVP of EuroBasket 1939.

Lubin fled Lithuania to California with his family in the face of the Russian invasion in 1939.