MIRSAD TURKCAN - 101 Greats of European Basketball

Mirsad
Turkcan
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The king of
rebounds
I
met Mirsad Turkcan in December of 1994 when I
went by the Calderon Hotel in Barcelona to write a
preview for the newspaper I was working for at the
time, Mundo Deportivo, for that week’s EuroLeague
game between FC Barcelona and Efes Pilsen.
I got there with the newspaper in my hands. While I
was in reception, I was talking to Efes coach Aydin Ors
and a young player from the Turkish team asked me,
in English, if he could have a look at the paper. Right
away, I heard a comment from him in pure Serbian.
He was Mirsad Turkcan, a young talent of Efes Pilsen,
who was already known in the basketball circles due
to his 16.6-point average at the FIBA European Championship
for Junior Men, played the previous summer
in Tel Aviv. Until then, I never had the chance to meet
him because in 1992, his getaway to Istanbul from Novi
Pazar, the Serbian city where he was born on June 7,
1976, happened at almost the same time as mine to
Barcelona. Turkcan was born under the name Jahovic
in a rather well-known family of doctors in Novi Pazar,
the main city in the region of Sandzak, with a majority
Muslim population. One of his sisters follows the family
tradition and is a doctor in Belgrade, while the other,
Emina, is a well-known singer both in Serbia and Turkey,
where she lives with her husband, the famous Turkish
singer Mustafa Sandal.
Mirsad’s thing was neither medicine nor music.
His destiny was in sports, specifically, basketball. As a
young talent, he was a candidate to play for all the big
teams in Yugoslavia. The fastest one to catch him was
Bosna, and young Mirsad ended up in Sarajevo. However,
in the spring of 1992, with the coming war in sight,
the Efes Pilsen scouts convinced his family to let him relocate
to Istanbul. So Mirsad Jahovic, who would soon
have a Turkish passport and the name Turkcan, started
his great adventure on the Bosphorus. Between 1992
and 2012, the year when he retired, many things happened.
Triumph in the Korac Cup
Mirsad Turkcan’s career didn’t develop at lightning
speed. It went step by step, improving season after
season. From the very start of his career, his main
weapon was rebounds. Standing at 2.06 meters, his
height didn’t precisely stand out for a basketball player,
but his jumping capabilities together with great timing
gave him, I’d say, 10 centimeters more. He usually won
rebounding duels with players much bigger than him. In
that 1994-95 season, his first on the senior team at Efes,
his numbers in 12 EuroLeague games were discreet,
2.2 points and 1.7 rebounds in 5.7 minutes on the floor.
In the summer of 1995, he made his debut in the
Turkish national team at the 1995 EuroBasket in Athens.
With 8.3 points and 7.5 rebounds, he was one of
the young prospects that stood out the most.
In the 1995-96 season, Turkcan was already a staple
on the competitive Efes Pilsen team, which played the
Korac Cup. Petar Naumoski, Ufuk Sarica, Conrad McRae,
Volkan Aydin, Tamer Oyguc, Murat Evliyaoglu, Turkcan
and the rest built a great team that, on its way to the
title game, had beaten several strong opponents, like
Maccabi Rishon, Varese, Panionios, Fenerbahce and
Fortitudo Bologna. The opponent in the final would
be Olimpia Milano, which really was Stefanel Trieste
101 greats of european basketball
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Vladimir Stankovic
relocated to Milan, a team with Dejan Bodiroga, Nando
Gentile, Rolando Blackman and Gregor Fucka. Milano’s
coach was Bogdan Tanjevic, who would be a future
coach of Turkcan’s with the Turkish national team and
Fenerbahce. The Italian team was the favorite, but Efes
won their first duel, played in Istanbul on March 6, 1996,
by the score of 76-68. The hero of the game was guard
Naumoski, who scored 31 points. Mirsad contributed
6 points and 6 boards. The eight-point difference gave
hope to both teams, but the Italians ended up losing
their third straight final in that competition. After PAOK
and ALBA, the executioner this time was Efes. In Milan,
Olimpia’s 77-70 win was not enough. Naumoski was the
top scorer again with 26 points, and Turkcan added 7
points and 13 rebounds. It was the European trophy
ever lifted by a Turkish team.
First Turk in the NBA
In 1997, at only 21 years old, Mirsad Turkcan was
already a future star and a coveted player. At the U22
World Championship for Men that year, he shined with
17.7 points and 10.7 rebounds, and at the 1997 Euro-
Basket, he helped Turkey reach eighth place. In 1998, he
finished the season as the best rebounder in the Turkish
League and nobody was surprised when the Houston
Rockets chose him with the 18th pick in that year’s NBA
draft. Turkcan would become the first Turkish player in
the NBA. Due to the lockout, he remained at Efes for
a while, but when the NBA season finally started, he
was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers and then to the
New York Knicks. After seven games in New York, he
was traded yet again to the Milwaukee Bucks, where he
played 10 more games. His average was 5.3 minutes,
only enough for 1.9 points and 1.9 rebounds per game.
With his height, solid shooting and especially, his great
rebounding capabilities, Turkcan almost had a perfect
profile for the NBA, where physical aspects are important.
But the coaches just didn’t trust him. Disappointed,
he decided to go back to Europe.
Turkcan started the 2000-01 season again at Efes
Pilsen, but he ended up with Racing Paris, where
his 15.9 points and 8.4 rebounds in 14 games were
enough for CSKA Moscow to call him for the start of
a big project that had one goal: winning the EuroLeague.
However, before moving to Moscow he had to
take part in another historic event for Turkish basketball.
At the 2001 EuroBasket in Turkey, the hosts
reached the title game where they lost to Yugoslavia,
led by Bodiroga and Predrag Stojakovic. However,
the silver for Turkey was its first medal in continental
competitions. Together with Ibrahim Kutluay, Hidayet
Turkoglu, Mehmed Okur, Harun Erdenay, Kerem Tunceri,
Kaya Peker, Huseyin Besok, Omer Onan, Orhun
Ene and Asim Pars, Turkcan made the history books.
With 10.7 points, he was the fourth-best scorer on
the team, and with 8.3 boards, the second-best rebounder.
In its first try, CSKA didn’t manage to reach the Bologna
Final Four in 2002. The team finished third in the
Top 16 with a 3-3 record, right behind Maccabi Tel Aviv
(4-2) and Tau Ceramica (4-2). With 16.2 points and 10.7
rebounds, Turkcan was one of the best players on his
team. The following season he played at Montepaschi
Siena of Italy. The team did reach the Final Four in Barcelona
but fell to Benetton Treviso in the semis by a close
65-62 score. It was, probably, the worst day as a pro for
Turkcan. In 29 minutes he didn’t score a single point, after
having averaged 14.8 that season, and he grabbed
just 5 rebounds, way below his season 11.8 per game
until then. In the game for third place, he collected his
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usual double-double again, 16 points and 14 rebounds,
but it was already too late. The title game would feature
Benetton and FC Barcelona.
In the 2003-04 season Turkcan was back to CS-
KA and he was again in the Final Four, this time in Tel
Aviv, but again, he missed out on the title game. In the
semis, Maccabi got the best of CSKA with a 93-85 win
as Anthony Parker (27 points) and Sarunas Jasikevicius
(18) led the way to victory. On the other side, Marcus
Brown scored 23, J.R. Holden contributed 16 points
and Turkcan picked up 10 points plus 10 boards. After
the season, he stayed in Moscow but switched teams
to Dynamo for one year before returning to Istanbul,
first to Ulker and later to Fenerbahce in 2006-07 until,
finally, both clubs merged into what today we know as
Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul.
Euroleague Basketball Legend
Lacking collective titles with his teams, Turkcan
received many individual accolades. He was MVP of
the 2002 regular season in the EuroLeague. He was
also MVP of the round six times in 2002-03, the Top
16 MVP in 2003 and a member of the All-EuroLeague
teams in 2002, 2003 and 2004. His career highs in the
EuroLeague are a performance index rating of 43, with
Montepaschi against Panathinaikos, and 27 points and
23 rebounds with CSKA against Buducnost. He had
49 double-doubles in the EuroLeague – still a record –
but that 27+23 performance has a special place in the
history of the competition. In 129 EuroLeague games,
he grabbed 1,287 rebounds, which still ranks fourth
all-time, behind only players with at least double his
amount of games in the competition. Still, Turkcan’s
9.95 rebounds per game is the second-highest career
average and the highest for anyone with more than 65
EuroLeague games played.
In February 2011, Turkcan suffered a severe ACL
injury and in 2012 he announced his retirement. On
September 16 of that year, Fenerbahce and CSKA Moscow
played a friendly game on the day of his official
goodbye. That day there was only one winner, Mirsad
Turkcan. Five years later, 2017 brought more recognition
for Turkcan as he was named an official Euroleague
Basketball Legend during the semifinals at the Final
Four in Istanbul. Two nights later, he was among the
many who celebrated when Fenerbahce became the
first Turkish club ever to with continental title, completing
a path that Mirsad Turkcan, the king of rebounds,
helped to build.
101 greats of european basketball
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