Erman Kunter

Erman Kunter — Biography

Erman Kunter is known as the player who scored 153 points in a single basketball game, a record for the top level of professional leagues worldwide; after playing he also made his mark as a coach with teams in Turkey and France. He also holds French citizenship and writes about basketball for the newspaper Cumhuriyet and Basket Dergisi.

A graduate of Galatasaray High School, he began playing at İTÜ and went on to wear the shirts of Beşiktaş, Eczacıbaşı, Yenişehir, Fenerbahçe and Çukurova Sanayi. On 12 March 1988 he scored 153 points for Fenerbahçe in a 175-101 win over Hilalspor, 81 of them in the first half, and hit 17 three-pointers. He was the Turkish League's top scorer in 1987-88. He played more than 200 times for the national team and scored 3,699 points, and he was in the sides that won bronze at the 1983 Mediterranean Games and gold in 1987. He stopped playing in 1992.

He began coaching in 1994 at Darüşşafaka and later led Beşiktaş, the Turkey national team (a EuroBasket quarter-final in 1999) and Galatasaray. In France he won the 2009-10 league title and the 2010 Super Cup with Cholet Basket, was named the league's best coach in 2010-11, and L'Équipe counted him among the league's five best foreign coaches. He also coached Villeurbanne and Le Mans and won the Presidential Cup with Beşiktaş in 2012. In 2022-23 he was head coach of the Tunisia national team. In 2021 he announced a candidacy for the presidency of the Turkish Basketball Federation.