101 Greats of European Basketball

The title collector
During the 1988-89 season, the impeccable
scouting of the great Jugoplastika
team coached by Boza Maljkovic followed
closely an unknown center who
played in Celik Zenica of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
on what was then a second-division
team. The reports were positive and in the summer
of 1989 the club from Split, the defending EuroLeague
champion, announced the signing of one Zoran Savic,
who was born on November 18, 1966, in Zenica. Savic
was a center who was almost 23 years old, but few
could have imagined that Jugoplastika had just made a
great signing and even fewer that Yugoslav basketball
had just added a new name to its list of greats.
The first game of the 1989-90 Yugoslav League,
which I saw on TV, had Jugoplastika as the visiting
team, I don’t remember against whom, but perhaps
Cibona Zagreb. What I do remember, however, was that
alongside those great players that had surprisingly
won the European crown in Munich the previous season
– Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja, Dusko Ivanovic, Velimir
Perasovic, Luka Pavicevic, Zoran Sretenovic and Goran
Sobin – a rookie wearing number 13 stood out. Defensive
rebound, two points, offensive rebound, assists,
another rebound, fastbreak, foul drawn, free throw
made. As Bogdan Tanjevic perfectly defines it: “Talent
is like a shorter leg. You can see it right away.”
That’s how Zoran Savic started his career, in style.
He was not a young talent who had starred on youth
teams of a great club in the old Yugoslavia. In fact, until
he was 16 years old, Savic didn’t even play basketball.
His path was slow, with obstacles, and most of all, with
lots of hard work. At that age, he was sent on loan to Capljina
Borac where he played with Jasmin Repesa – with
whom he later won the Italian League title at Fortitudo
Bologna. But life was fair to Savic. His great will to work
paid off with the chance given to him by Maljkovic – and
Savic used it. In his first season playing elite basketball,
he played more like a veteran than a rookie. The first
title arrived in February, when Jugoplastika defeated
Crvena Zvezda 79-77 in the Yugoslav Cup final played
in Dubrovnik. On April 19, in Zaragoza, Jugoplastika
won its second straight European crown by defeating
FC Barcelona in the final 72-67 with 4 points and 7 rebounds
from Savic. In May, Jugoplastika won its third
straight Yugoslav League title and coach Dusan Ivkovic
called Savic among the candidates for the Yugoslavia
team at the 1990 World Cup in Argentina.
A rookie world champion
Against tradition and custom, Savic made his debut
in the top national team at 24 years of age. He stayed
with the team until he voluntarily retired after the 1997
EuroBasket in Barcelona. Yugoslavia, first as a united
country including all its regions, and later in a reduced
version only with Serbia and Montenegro, always had
talented players with world fame like Drazen Petrovic,
Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, Sasha Djordjevic, Predrag
Danilovic, Zarko Paspalj or Dejan Bodiroga. But in all its
schemes and systems, first with Coach Ivkovic and later
with Zeljko Obradovic, there was a key piece: Zoran
Savic.
Year after year, Savic improved his technique and
his physical strength, and with a great work ethic he became
a very useful player. He lacked height, but he had
everything else: rebounds, good shooting, assists and
101 greats of european basketball
Zoran Savic
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