Martin Jelínek, a former Czech league and national-team basketball player, has died at the age of 55 after a serious illness. His death last week was confirmed on October 27, 2026, by his older brother, Josef Jelínek, the all-time leading scorer in Czech basketball competitions, in an interview with the Brno daily Rovnost.
“The day before he died, he told me: ‘Listen, brother, I can’t go on any more. We’ll meet up there,'” Josef said. He added that their mother had suffered from the same illness, and that Martin “knew exactly how it would go and how it would end.”
Following in his brother’s footsteps
Like Josef, five years his senior, Martin was born in Kutná Hora and made his breakthrough in Brno, where he reached the top division. He built his reputation on toughness, persistence and his ability to mark opponents’ best players. “You could say he followed in my footsteps,” Josef said. “He collected success in the youth teams, he was tall, and it was soon clear he had what it took.”
His best years came at Nový Jičín, home of one of the strongest Czech teams of the 1990s, most often known as Mlékárna Kunín. There he won the league title alongside his brother, as well as a silver medal, and played in European cup competition, as he later did with Sparta Prague. “He was a powerful, aggressive type of player,” Josef said. “I value enormously that we have a title together.”
At the end of his second season in Nový Jičín he injured his knee, and he retired early, before turning 30.
National team
Jelínek represented his country at junior and under-22 level and in the senior national team, appearing for the last time in qualifying for EuroBasket 1997. He was the uncle of current Czech international David Jelínek. He had lived for many years in Brno’s Vinohrady district and this year moved to a house in nearby Otnice.