101 Greats of European Basketball

never-ending game by 117-130. The great Wayne Brabender
scored 41 points, followed by Szczerbiak with
26, Clifford Luyk with 25 and Rafa Rullan with 18. The
duo of Cosic (31) and Djerdja (24) did its part, but Real
Madrid had two more men: Camilo Cabrera (12 points)
and Juan Antonio Corbalan (8). I remember the game,
watched it on TV. So many masters of the game deserved
to be remembered because of their talent, not
because of the unsportsmanlike attempted swindle.
With his 18 seasons in Zadar, “Pino” Djerdja shares
the record – with Bogdan Muller of Olimpija – for the
longest tenure with one team in the Yugoslav League.
With 6,640 points in 315 games (21.1) he is the third
best scorer of the Yugoslav League after Vinko Jelovac
(Olimpija) and Radmilo Misovic (Borac Cacak). Between
1968 and 1970, Djerdja played two seasons in humble
Gorizia of Italy and helped the team reach the first division,
but after that he was back to his Zadar.
In the summer of 1966, he was about to play in Italy
for Cantu. The coach of the team was Borislav Stankovic,
the future FIBA secretary general, who knew Djerdja
well. Stankovic’s idea was to try to convert Djerdja into
an Italian player using the fact that Zadar was Italian
when Djerdja was born. The rules only allowed for only
one foreigner and Stankovic had already signed American
center Bob Burgess.
“Djerdja was a great player, atypical,” Stankovic
remembered. “He was an unbelievable mix of an individualist
and a team player. His plays were unpredictable.
He had great technique and imagination with no
limits. He was a great leader. He spent the winter with
us because the Yugoslav League was played during the
summer. He played some tourneys and friendly games
but to obtain the Italian nationality he had to reject the
Yugoslav one, and he didn’t want to do it.”
Both Djerdja and Stankovic, among others, are
protagonists of a great documentary with the title “We
Were World Champions”, dedicated to the development
of Yugoslav basketball from 1945 to 1970, the year of
the World Cup in Ljubljana.
After putting an end to his brilliant career, Djerdja
stayed in basketball as coach of Zadar, PAOK Thessaloniki
and Livorno. He was national team coach of Yugoslavia
at the 1983 EuroBasket but finished seventh because
the Golden Generation was in its twilight (Cosic,
Slavnic, Kicanovic, Dalipagic) while the youngsters
like Drazen Petrovic had just started. With Croatia, he
won the bronze medal at World Cup 1994 in Toronto,
Canada with a great generation led by Toni Kukoc and
Dino Radja. Djerdja’s son Dario (who, by the way, goes
by Gjergja) is the current coach of Telenet Ostend,
while his other son, Roko, also played basketball. “Pino”
Djerdja still lives in Zadar. He is willing, at 80 years old,
to challenge anyone older than 40 to play a game of
one-on-one.
Basketball still runs through his veins.
101 greats of european basketball
Giuseppe-Pino Gjergja
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