101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
was caught strongly, however, by a very tall kid with
great movements and coordination who was also a
great swimmer. Karkovic was surprised when the kid
told him that he didn’t play basketball at all. So Krakovic
invited him to a tryout, to which Toni agreed. He
practiced football and basketball at the same time for
a while, but – fortunately – basketball won.
That was the start of a brilliant career. He was a
starter soon after that, but in his first final, against
Cibona for the Croatian title, he suffered his first disappointment,
a loss at home in front of all his people. He
felt some consolation with the Yugoslav championship
played in Kraljevo (Serbia) where Jugoplastika dominated
strong opponents like host Sloga – who had a
pair of future NBA big men like Vlade Divac and Milos
Babic – or Buducnost Podgorica, with Zarko Paspalj,
Zdravko Radulovic and Luka Pavicevic.
In the summer of 1985, coach Svetislav Pesic called
Kukoc for the U16 European Championship in Ruse,
Bulgaria, where Yugoslavia won the gold medal in what
was only the first step of a great generation, with Divac,
Nebosja Ilic, Slavisa Koprivica, Radenko Dobras, Emilio
Kovacic and Zoran Kalpic. Jugoplastika coach Slavko
Trninic included Kukoc in the first team at 16 years old.
He made his debut in Podgorica against Buducnost. In
the 1985-86 season, he played 20 games, totaling 52
points (2.6 ppg). In Ruse, Kukoc had a scoring average of
5.5 but he already increased that number to 12.6 in the
summer of 1986 for the U18 European Championship in
Gmunden, Austria. More new players came to the team,
like Pavicevic Dino Radja, Sasha Djordjevic, Teoman
Alibegovic, Pavicevic and Samir Avdic. The following
season, with Zoran “Moka” Slavnic on the Jugoplastika
bench, Kukoc scored 317 points in 22 league games
(14.4) and 46 more in three playoff games.
The great summer of 1987
For the 1987 EuroBasket in Athens, Yugoslav coach
Kresimir Cosic called four kids to the team: Divac, Radja,
Djordjevic and Kukoc. They won the bronze medal and right
after that, they joined the expedition of the junior team
to the U19 World Cup in Bormio, Italy. Pesic put together
a great team that won all of its six games, including two
against a powerful American team with Larry Johnson,
Gary Payton, Stacey Augmon, Kevin Pritchard, Lionel Simmons,
Scott Williams, Dwayne Schintzius, Brian Williams
and Larry Brown as coach. The scoring average of that
team was 112 points per game! The showdown against
the Americans in the first stage ended 110-95 with Kukoc
in a state of grace: 37 points on 11 of 12 three-pointers!
“Never, ever, in my career would I get even close to
those numbers,” Kukoc told me much later. “The high
for me in a game for triples was five or six, but that day
everything was going in. I felt extremely comfortable.”
In the final game, the Americans’ attention went to Kukoc
but the heroes of the game would be the big men: Divac
scored 21 points and Radja had 20 as Yugoslavia won 86-76.
Toni Kukoc’s career skyrocketed after that. In 1988,
he won his first Yugoslav League title with Jugoplastika.
On April 6, 1989, a very young team for Jugoplastika
surprised everyone at the EuroLeague Final Four in Munich
by defeating FC Barcelona in the semis and then
Maccabi Tel Aviv in the final, 75-69, with 18 points by
Kukoc. At the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, he won the silver
medal with Yugoslavia after losing the final to the
USSR. At the 1989 EuroBasket in Zagreb, Yugoslavia
rolled to the gold just as they did at the 1990 World Cup
in Buenos Aires, where Kukoc was named MVP of the
tournament. I remember the ovation he got in the final
against the USSR, a few minutes before the buzzer. A
man by my side rose up and yelled: “Thank you, skinny!”
172
173