101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
broad shoulders to keep taller, stronger opponents at
bay. Also, he was very smart, because he understood
the game like few big men. He came back from Buenos
Aires in 1990 as a world champion, having averaged 8.6
points and 2.7 boards. He was the fourth-best scorer
on a very powerful team, after Petrovic (18.4), Kukoc
(16.5) and Paspalj (13.0), but ahead of Divac (8.2). In the
semifinals against a good Team USA, playing against
Alonzo Mourning, Savic scored 14 points and added 5
rebounds.
Half a year later, on April 18, 1991, in Paris, Jugoplastika
won its third straight continental final, once
again beating FC Barcelona, which was now coached
by Maljkovic. The Split team, with Zeljko Pavlicevic now
at the helm, won by the score of 70-65. The MVP of
the tourney was Kukoc, but the man of the final was
Savic, who scored 27 points and added 4 rebounds.
That’s still the scoring record of a Final Four championship
game, shared with a few other players. In the
summer of that year, at the 1991 EuroBasket in Rome,
Savic won the gold medal with a complete Yugoslavia
for the last time (even though Slovenian Jure Zdovc
had to leave the team before the semifinals). With the
start of the war in Yugoslavia, Savic left Split and in
October of 1991 signed for FC Barcelona. Two years
later he moved to Greece to play with PAOK Thessaloniki.
Those are the “empty” years of his career, as he
did not add any titles. With PAOK, in 1994, he won his
third European trophy, the Korac Cup, after two wins
over Stefanel Trieste. In the game in Thessaloniki,
a 75-66 victory, Savic contributed 15 points and 10
boards while in Trieste, a 100-91 win, he had 8 points
and 2 rebounds. In his second PAOK season, Savic
won the Greek Cup. Due to international sanctions, he
could not play at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona with
Yugoslavia, the 1993 EuroBasket in Germany or the
1994 World Cup in Toronto.
Success in 19 of 21 finals
Yugoslavia was back for the 1995 EuroBasket in
Athens and was back in style: taking the gold in an
unforgettable title game victory, 96-90 against a Lithuania
team with Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Marculionis,
Rimas Kurtinaitis, Valdemaras Chomicius and Arturas
Karnisovas. On the other side were Divac, Bodiroga,
Djordjevic (41 points, 9 of 12 threes), Danilovic, Paspalj,
Dejan Tomasevic and Savic. For the tournament, Savic
averaged 11 points and 4 rebounds.
After his great tournament, Zeljko Obradovic, the
national team coach, took Savic to Real Madrid with
him. He played a solid season (16.4 ppg) but in the 1996
Final Four in Paris, Real Madrid lost to FC Barcelona in
the semifinals. Savic’s next stop was Italy as he signed
for Kinder Bologna under Ettore Messina. In the summer
of 1996, Savic took a silver medal with Yugoslavia
at the Atlanta Olympics, but he missed the title game
against the USA due to a twisted ankle from the semis
against Lithuania.
Savic’s first year in Bologna ended up blank, but
he found some consolation at the 1997 EuroBasket in
Barcelona as Yugoslavia won the gold medal, Savic’s
sixth, to go with an Olympic silver, plus a Korac Cup and
a Greek Cup. In the 1997-98 season, he won the triple
crown: EuroLeague, Italian League and Italian Cup with
Kinder. He won his third European crown at Palau Sant
Jordi in Barcelona, just where he had started his international
career years earlier. He played alongside Danilovic,
Augusto Binelli, Hugo Sconochini, Alessandro
Abbio and Radoslav Nesterovic to defeat AEK Athens in
316
317