Radomir Šaper was born to a Greek father, Panagiotis Siaperas - Panche Shapkar, a retailer from the village of Eratyra in northern Greece, and a Serbian mother, Vukosava Mihajlović.

The Belgrade Championship was held in 1942, and the history of Yugoslavian basketball began, with Raša and Sveta Šaper defending the colours of BASK.

The team consisted of Raša and Sveta Šaper, Nebojša Popović, Vasilije Stojković, Pavle Kostić, Ivan Dimić, Miodrag Stefanović and Mile Nikolić.

He invited Radomir Šaper to Opatija to prepare for the qualifying tournament in Nice, where Raša played his first game with the national team.

Following these results, Danilo Knežević, then President of the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia, invited Radomir Šaper, Borislav Stanković, Nebojša Popović and Aleksandar Nikolić, all active athletes whose playing careers were in decline or completely over, to join his staff.

Coach Aleksandar Popović led the winning team, and Korać won the title of Europe's best scorer with 216 points in nine games.

Confirmation that a formula for success had been found came two years later in 1963 at the World Championship in Rio de Janeiro, where the team again won the silver medal, behind Brazil.

Involved in this historical success of winning the country’s first world title were: Ratomir Tvrdić, Ljubodrag Simonović, Vinko Jelovac, Trajko Rajković, Aljoša Žorga, Dragan Kapičić, Ivo Daneu, Krešimir Ćosić, Damir Šolman, Nikola Plećaš, Dragutin Čermak, Petar Skansi, Ranko Žeravica, the coach, and the president of the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia, Radomir Šaper.

[13] At the Basketball Federation of Yugoslavia Conference, held in Skopje on 26 June 1970, Raša Šaper was once again elected president along with vice-presidents Željko Cindrić and Nebojša Popović.

He was also the commissioner of the Yugoslav Basketball Cup and the creator and initiator of the YUBA League, a national championship organised and conceived to be the strongest tournament in the world after the American NBA.

[15] At the Congress of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) held on 24 August 1972, Radomir Šaper was elected president of its Technical Commission, a position in which he remained until his death in 1998.

This tournament used some of the innovative rules of basketball for which Radomir Šaper advocated during his life (mixed male women's teams, different scoring, duration of the match).