101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
Lokomotiva wanted to sign both, but Jugoplastika offered
Solman terms that the Zagreb club could not match,
and therefore he went to Split. (That’s why he’s not on my
Zagreb list, because he played most of his career in Split).
Plecas decided to accept Lokomotiva’s offer, but Mladost
wouldn’t release his papers. He had to spend 10 months
without playing, but in the end the federation gave the
green light, and Plecas was registered by Lokomotiva at
noon on July 12, 1967. That same night he made his debut
against Crvena Zvezda. He starred with 26 points. The Yugoslav
League was still played during the summer, then,
but would start to be played in arenas the following year.
Lokomotiva won 106-96 against a strong Crvena Zvezda
team with veterans Vladimir Cvetkovic and Sreten Dragojlovic,
plus youngsters like Ljubodrag Simonovic, Dragan
Kapicic and Dragisa Vucinic. Soon, in the Yugoslav Cup
final, Lokomotiva defeated Olimpija 78-77 for what would
become Plecas’s first big trophy.
Although it was his debut in the league that year,
Plecas was already an established talent. The flawless
scouting service of the Yugoslav federation had all the top
talents on file. Solman had made his debut in the national
team in 1964 and Plecas did the same one year later, in
the Balkans championship in Kraljevo, Serbia. Yugoslavia
ended up second despite playing at home because it lost
to Bulgaria. However, Coach Ranko Zeravica had four players
on the team who, only five years later, would be world
champions with him still on the bench. They were Plecas,
Simonovic, Kapicic and Aljosa Zorga. Bogdan Tanjevic, a
future great coach, was also there. Talk about vision.
Zeravica took some youngsters to the 1967 EuroBasket
in Helsinki, but not Plecas, whose debut on the great
international stage was postponed until the 1968 Olympics
in Mexico. He returned from Mexico with a silver
medal around his neck, contributing 9 points per game.
Triumph in Ljubljana
Plecas’s career lasted until the late 1970s, but his
peak came at the 1970 World Cup in Ljubljana. At only
22 years of age, he became a world champion with
players like Kreso Cosic, Kapicic, Solman, Zorga and
Simonovic, who was one year younger. In the decisive
game against the United States, a 70-63 victory, Cosic
netted 15 points, Petar Skansi scored 14 and Plecas
had 12 points on 8-of-10 free throw shooting. He could
always be identified by his moustache, but the following
day, he honored a bet and shaved it off completely.
The following year, Plecas got a call from Aleksandar
Nikolic, the coach at Ignis Varese, the European champ
at the time. The offer was for $60,000 per season to
play at the Italian club, a lot of money back then, not at
all comparable to what he was getting at Cibona. But
he could not leave. The regulations of the federation
said that players had to be at least 28 years old to play
outside the country.
Plecas played with the national team until 1975. He
won gold medals at the 1973 EuroBasket in Barcelona
(the first for Yugoslavia) and the 1975 EuroBasket in
Belgrade. He had previously one two EuroBasket silver
medals, in Naples in 1969 and in Essen in 1971, then
added a silver at the 1974 World Cup in San Juan.
Plecas also took part in the 1972 Olympics in Munich,
where the team finished fifth. In the meantime, he was
also a starter for his team every year. He broke countless
records – in one game against Partizan, he scored
67 points – and he was the league’s top scorer twice, in
1969-70 (30.9 points per game) and 1974-75 (33.1). In
between, the top scorer for the 1972-73 season was his
friend Damir Solman for Jugoplastika (31.0).
In researching data on Plecas, I found an interesting
figure: between 1957 and 1982 – that’s 25 years – the
268
269