101 Greats of European Basketball

An icon without
a ring
Just seeing his number of titles or medals in
the Olympics, World Cup and EuroBasket,
there is no doubt that Vlade Divac, who
was born on February 3, 1968, in Prijepolje,
Serbia, is one of the most-crowned players
in basketball. What’s more, he had a great
NBA career. But despite his 20 years in basketball’s
elite, he is missing something: an NBA title, although
that’s something that almost happened for him, too.
In the 2001-02 season, his Sacramento Kings were
the NBA’s team of the moment, with a style of play
that was joyful, fun and attractive. In that season’s
Western Conference finals, the Kings were tied 3-3 in
their best-of-seven series with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Having won their division, the Kings played Game
7 at home, but lost 112-106. The Lakers qualified for
the NBA finals and erased the New Jersey Nets 4-0,
the same as Sacramento would have done if it had
reached the finals.
But even without an NBA ring, Vlade Divac is still
one of the greatest Europeans to have played in that
competition, in addition to being one of its European
pioneers. From 1989 to 2005, he played 16 seasons
with the Lakers (1989-1996, 2004-05), Charlotte
(1996-98) and Sacramento (1998-2004). He appeared
in 1,134 games, 979 of them as a starter, collecting
13,398 points (11.8 on average), 9,326 rebounds (9.2),
1,631 blocks (1.4). He earned one all-star appearance,
in 2001.
Pure talent
Of all the players in this series, if I have to choose
one who I knew best and have seen play hundreds of
times, it’s Vlade Divac. I can remember his first great
game, the one in which he showed that he was a future
star.
It was the first week of the Yugoslav League of
1985-86. Crvena Zvezda played against Sloga Kraljevo
at the Pinki arena in Zemun, a suburb of Belgrade on
the banks of the Danube River. Crvena Zvezda won,
but had to suffer to do so because of an unknown kid
named Vlade Divac, author of 27 points that day and
owner of a game that left no doubt about his enormous
potential. The previous season, at 16 years old, Divac
had debuted as a pro with Sloga. But his 22 points in 20
games were nothing more than a sign of how his coach,
Milan Bogojevic, believed in him.
In fact, Bogojevic is to “blame” for Divac’s great
career. As a kid, Divac left his hometown of Prijepolje
and the home of his parents to live with his maternal
grandmother in Kraljevo. One day, Bogojevic saw him
in the street and immediately fixated on Divac’s height.
He invited Divac to a Sloga practice, and that’s how it
started. During the summer of 1984, while they were
watching a game of the Olympics basketball tournament
from Los Angeles, Bogojevic made a bold prediction,
telling Divac: “Look, if you work a lot, you will play
in the next Olympics in 1988 in Seoul.”
Many times since then, Divac has said that those
words from Bogojevic that day seemed like “science
fiction”. But when four years later he returned from
Seoul with a silver medal, Divac hung it around the neck
of Milan Bogojevic.
Divac’s pure talent for basketball never went unrecognized.
The coaches of the Yugoslav federation, with their
101 greats of european basketball
Vlade Divac
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