IVO DANEU - 101 Greats of European Basketball

Ivo
Daneu
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The first great
Slovenian
He never won a European cup. In fact,
he didn’t even play in any finals. He
didn’t win any other titles since they
didn’t even exist in his playing years.
But believe me, Ivo Daneu was one of
the greats. Daneu, who was born on
October 6, 1937, in Maribor, was the first Slovenian
basketball superstar. Slovenia is a small country,
with hardly two million people. But it has a long basketball
tradition and many greats played alongside
Daneu and after him. From the generations of Bors
Kristancic, Vital Eiselt, Miha Lokar, Marjan Kandus,
Bogdan Miler, Matija Dermastija, Borut Basin and Alosa
Zorga, continuing with Peter Vilfan and Jure Zdovc,
and leading us to modern stars like Rasho Nesterovic,
Primoz Brezec, Erazem Lorbek, Jaka Lakovic, Bostjan
Nachbar, Sasha Vujacic, Goran Dragic and, the latest,
Luka Doncic.
However, before all of them was Ivo Daneu, a
1.84-meter guard who offered whatever skill his team
needed. If the team needed points, he scored them. If
his teammates were in need of assists, he delivered in
spades. If he had to guard the other team’s best scorer,
there he was. He was one of those players who makes
his teammates better, even above their real potential.
In the old Yugoslavia, the name Daneu was quickly
matched with Radivoj Korac. Almost from the same
generation (Korac was born in 1938), they formed the
greatest duo of early Yugoslav basketball and they
were key cogs in the rise of that country’s basketball
from mediocrity to elite.
In his hometown of Maribor, which he had to leave
when his family was thrown out by the Germans, like
many other Slovenians, Daneu’s first love was tennis.
After that, he tried football until, as luck would have it, a
basketball hit him in the face. He was walking out of the
stadium and not paying any attention. So he stopped
by the basketball court, picked up the ball and scored.
He never thought of any other sport again.
His great talent didn’t go unnoticed at his local Maribor
club, Branik. Several first-division teams wanted to
sign him. Partizan Belgrade offered him “coal and food”
– a common remuneration in those years. But Ljubljana
was closer. He signed for Olimpija in 1956, and the
following year he led the team to its first title! With
Maribor, he was already on the national team, but it was
when he was with Olimpija that he was called – together
with teammates Marjan Kandus, Boris Kristancic, Bogdan
Miler and Matija Dermastija – by coach Aleksandar
Nikolic to be in the 1957 EuroBasket squad in Istanbul.
Yugoslavia finished sixth, and the scoring average of a
20-year-old Daneu was 6.5 points. But Nikolic knew he
had a leader for years to come.
Real Madrid wanted him
With Olimpija, Daneu won six Yugoslav League titles
between 1957 and 1970, but there is no reliable statistical
data. He took his team several times to the gates
of the European final. At the 1967 Final Four in Madrid,
together with Borut Basin (who scored 32 points), he
drove the Real Madrid defense crazy, even though the
Whites won 88-86. Santiago Bernabeu, the Real Madrid
president, gave an order: “Sign this number 10 immediately.”
No. 10 was, of course, Daneu. However, it was
101 greats of european basketball
Ivo Daneu
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Vladimir Stankovic
impossible for him to get out of Yugoslavia and even
more difficult to sign for a team from Spain, a country
with whom Yugoslavia didn’t have diplomatic relations.
In the 1963 eighthfinals against Alsace Bagnolet of
France, Daneu was the unwilling protagonist of a scandal.
Daneu was in the military service in Belgrade, and
without him, Olimpija lost 80-61. For the second game,
the club moved heaven and earth to try to get Daneu to
play. Permission arrived at the last minute and he left
in his car at about noon. It was a 635-kilometer drive
to Ljubljana and at that time it took about eight hours
due to bad roads and, especially, the snow. Olimpija
waited for Daneu and delayed the start of the game for
almost two hours. The French protested, but the game
didn’t start until news reached the arena that Daneu
was stranded in the middle of the snow. Without him,
Olimpija won 128-94. The French team signed an official
protest to FIBA, who didn’t even want to hear about it.
What is for sure and from what I saw, on television
or in person – taking into account that I started working
in the spring of 1967 – is that Daneu was Olimpija’s best
player by far: a creator, a game director, the soul of his
team. Unlike the lack of data on his league appearances,
there is a lot of information from his national team
years. At the 1959 EuroBasket in Sofia, with Korac by
his side, Daneu averaged 8.1 points. In the Rome Olympics
he was up to 9.9 and at the Belgrade EuroBasket,
where Yugoslavia got its first medal, he reached 12.2.
At the 1963 World Cup in Rio, he averaged 11.9 points
with a decisive basket for a win over the United States.
He averaged 13.6 at the Poland EuroBasket after that.
At the Tokyo Olympics he scored 12.1 points and in
1965 EuroBasket in Moscow he had 12.4. He reached
15.0 points at the 1967 World Cup in Montevideo. At
that championship – where his team won a silver medal
– Daneu was chosen MVP of the event. When we talk
about his scoring numbers, we must remember that
he was not a natural scorer. He was all about smarts,
game vision, assists and a secure hand for the last
shot. His specialty, like Clifford Luyk, was the hook shot.
He always dribbled to the right corner and, after leaving
his rivals behind, he shot his sky hook from the corner,
parallel to the backboard.
For the 1967 EuroBasket in Helsinki, Yugoslav coach
Ranko Zeravica wanted to inject young blood into the
team and left out some veterans like Daneu and Korac.
But after the failure of that team (ninth place), both were
called again for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico. Daneu
responded with brilliant play. His scoring average was
13.9 points, but all the plays started in his hands, all
the possessions were his first. In a dramatic semifinal
against the USSR, with Yugoslavia trailing 58-57, a great
assist from Daneu led to a foul on a young Kresimir
Cosic, who scored both free throws. Petar Skansi, after
a failed attack by the Soviets, increased the lead to 61-
58. Anatoli Povidola scored for the rivals, but then, the
most famous three seconds in Yugoslavian basketball
took place: another pass from Daneu to Vladimir Cvetkovic,
who was fouled. All of Yugoslavia stopped in front
of the TV screen. Daneu walked up to Cvetkovic and told
him: “Take it easy, you will score both.”
And Cvetkovic did. The final basket, by Sergey Belov
to make it 63-62, was not very useful. In the final, Yugoslavia
lost to the United States, led by Spencer Haywood
(21 points) and Jo Jo White (14), by the final score
65-50. Only Daneu, who scored 16, stood out against
the Americans.
World champion
After winning another silver medal at the 1969 Euro-
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Basket, the 1970 World Cup arrived with the final stage
in Ljubljana. Olimpija had won the league in 1970, but in
the final games two things happened: Daneu suffered a
serious muscle injury in a game against Crvena Zvezda,
and there was a conflict between him and his national
teammate Cvetkovic. Coach Zeravica faced a tough dilemma.
He needed both, but he knew he could only take
one. He chose Daneu because of his experience and
the fact that the tourney would be played in Ljubljana in
front of his fans. The injured Daneu didn’t play much. He
only played in two games and scored only 8 points. But
in the decisive game against the USA (70-63) he scored
4 important points down the stretch and led Yugoslavia
to its first world title. It was the pinnacle of his brilliant
career. In 2010, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that
win, Daneu himself called upon his teammates from the
team that won that historic gold medal to gather once
again. Trajko Rajkovic and Cosic had since passed on.
The rest spent three unforgettable days together.
The record books show Daneu with 202 games
played for the national team and 2,214 points scored
(11.0 ppg.) to make him the seventh-best scorer of the
team after Drazen Dalipagic, Dragan Kicanovic, Cosic,
Korac, Drazen Petrovic and Vinko Jelovac. On 32 occasions,
he was the high scorer on the team and he scored
10 or more points in 105 games. He won eight medals
– a World Cup gold, six World and EuroBasket silvers,
and a EuroBasket bronze. In 1967, he was chosen as the
best Yugoslav sportsman. On September 12, 2007, he
was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
And here is one unbelievable piece of data by today’s
standards: During the whole length of his brilliant
career, Daneu was a working man from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.,
until he retired. Sometimes he had problems taking
days off so he could play. It was another era, but also
with great players. His son, Jaka, was also an important
player in Olimpija, but not quite at his father’s level. Ivo,
Jaka, and Jaka’s sons were promoters for the 2013 EuroBasket,
which took place in Slovenia, a small country
size-wise, but a great one in terms of basketball.
101 greats of european basketball
Ivo Daneu
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