101 Greats of European Basketball

The Pink Panther
of basketball
It was April of 1991.The final series of the Yugoslav
League between the great Jugoplastika Split and
its biggest rival those years, Partizan Belgrade.
After winning the first game in Split, 85-74, Jugoplastika
also won the second game in Belgrade by
the score of 95-91. The third game was also played
in Belgrade but Jugoplastika didn’t wait to celebrate
the title at home. With an 86-64 victory, Jugoplastika
swept the series and lifted its fourth straight trophy.
With 4 minutes and 18 seconds left in the game, Split
coach Zeljko Pavlicevic decided to sit Toni Kukoc. Then
something unforgettable happened: the Partizan fans,
even if hurt by the tough defeat of their team, rose to
their feet and gave Kukoc a one-minute-long standing
ovation. It was a gesture of admiration towards a basketball
genius, but also with a feeling that that would
be the last time that Kukoc would play in Belgrade.
Even though in June of that year the Croatian players
would be on the Yugoslav team that won EuroBasket
1991 in Rome, the political climate was very tense already.
The basketball world was already making plans
for a united league the following season under the direction
of YUBA, a recently formed club association. However,
it was pretty clear that the third game of that final
series was to be the last of the history of the Yugoslav
championships, and that Jugoplastika would be the last
champion of a country that gave so much to basketball.
I don’t know if Djordjevic still feels the same way
about that, but I do know people who would agree with
every word that he said 22 years ago. Bozidar Maljkovic,
the coach and builder of the great Jugoplastika, doesn’t
compare Kukoc to players from other eras, but he does
say: “Toni Kukoc is the best player I ever coached. Huge
talent, versatile, able to play all five positions. He also
won all the important titles.”
Signed at the beach
If genes have something to do with a career as a
sportsman, Toni Kukoc was somehow destined for
sports because of his father, Ante, who had been a
goalkeeper on the teams of Nada and Split and was
crazy about any sport. Since he was a child, Kukoc, who
was born on September 18, 1968, showed a talent for
all sports, but basketball would enter his life rather late.
First, there was table tennis. Radojka, Toni’s mother,
was happy to enroll him in table tennis because practices
took place in Gripe pavilion, just a hundred meters
away from the Kukoc family apartment.
Soon enough, Toni showed a great talent for the
sport and at just 10 years old, he was champion of Dalmatia,
a coastal region of Croatia. However, his true love
was football and, like any kid in Split, his dream was one
day wearing the jersey of the famous local club Hajduk.
With the support of his father, Kukoc passed the texts
at 11 and joined the Hajduk cadet team. He was good,
some even say very good, but problems started when
he began growing fast. At 13 years old he was already
1.90 meters, but he was very thin, too, and that earned
him the nickname “Olive” – after Popeye’s girlfriend in
the comic strip.
Kukoc kept playing football until he was 15. In the
summer of 1983, Igor Karkovic – a young talent scout
for Jugoplastika – saw a group of young kids playing
several sports on a beach close to Split. His attention
101 greats of european basketball
Toni Kukoc
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