101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
to finish third in the group and advance to the playoffs.
But its opponent in that playoff, Partizan Belgrade, had
the home-court advantage for having taken second
place in its own group.
In Belgrade, despite a great game by Predrag Drobnjak
of Partizan, with 19 points and 14 rebounds, Olympiacos
won 81-71. However, the Reds went home and
lost the second game, 61-60. The series was decided
in the third game, once more with the legendary Hala
Pionir packed by more than 7,000 fans. Olympiacos, led
by Rivers with 21 points and 5 assists, won 74-69.
In the quarterfinals, it would come to a showdown
against Olympiacos’s archrival and the defending EuroLeague
champion, Panathinaikos. At home, in front
of 15,000 fans, Olympiacos won 65-57 with 12 points
by Rivers. The advantage was not too large, but in the
second game, we got to see one of the biggest shows
ever by a team in a derby of this magnitude. Against
18,000 Panathinaikos fans, Olympiacos won 49-69.
Rivers played 40 minutes and had good numbers: 2 of 6
two-pointers, 2 of 2 triples and 7 of 7 free throws for 17
points plus 5 assists. Olympiacos had advanced to the
Final Four, where it would join Olimpija Ljubljana, ASVEL
Villeurbanne and FC Barcelona.
Two rhapsodies in Rome
The main feature of great players is playing better
when it matters the most. David Rivers made that
assertion ring true in Rome in 1997. In the semifinal
against Union Olimpija – which had Rasho Nesterovic,
Marko Milic, Arriel McDonald, Vladimir Stepania, Roman
Horvat, Marko Tusek, Jaka Daneu and the rest – Rivers
scored 28 points, his season high, for a 74-65 win. In
the other semifinal, Barcelona defeated ASVEL 77-70
with Sasha Djordjevic as its best scorer with 16 points.
The big final was played on April 24, 1997, at the
Olympic Arena in Rome. It was a much-anticipated final
between the two favorites, a battle that was to be
marked by the individual duel between Djordjevic and
Rivers, the best two guards in Europe at that moment.
Halfway through the season, Djordjevic had left Portland
of the NBA and joined Barcelona, becoming an
immediate star and the leader of the team. He formed a
great duo with forward Arturas Karnisovas.
After a bad start to the game, falling behind 9-2,
Olympiacos rallied behind 10 points from Rivers for an
18-18 tie. Once the Reds stepped ahead, there was no
turning back. They won 73-58 with Rivers as MVP. He
scored 27 points, grabbed 6 boards, dished 3 assists
and had 3 steals in 39 minutes. Dragan Tarlac, the other
hero of the Greek team, had 11 points and 14 rebounds.
On the other side, Djordjevic scored only 6 points, very
far from the 13.9 points he had been averaging up to
that game. It wasn’t the first duel between the two
guards. In the 1993-94 Korac Cup quarterfinals, when
Djordjevic played for Olimpia Milano and Rivers for Antibes,
the Italian team won the first game 98-85 but the
individual duel was a tie, 23 points for each. In the second
game, Antibes won 95-88, but Djordjevic finished
with 31 points and Rivers had 20.
Many years after the Rome duel, Djordjevic told me
from Milano about Rivers:
“I knew him since he was at Notre Dame. One summer
a group of friends that included Jure Zdovc, Slavko
Kotnik and Vlada Dragutinovic played against him, Ken
Barlow, Tim Kempton. Right then and there, I already
saw what was confirmed later in European basketball:
he was a great player. He was one of the best, if not the
best, American guards that ever played in Europe. His
game was like poetry. He had explosive legs, fast hands
300
301