101 Greats of European Basketball

A triple
Euro-champ
with an NBA ring
I
am not sure whether Split is the only town outside
of the United States that has produced two NBA
champs, but if there is any other, it will have a hard
time putting together what Toni Kukoc and Zan Tabak
accomplished. Between the two of them, they
feature six EuroLeague titles in their club of origin,
Jugoplastika Split, and subsequently four NBA titles
(Kukoc with Chicago in 1996, 1997 and 1998 and Tabak
with Houston in 1995). Both were in the Split team that
won the EuroLeague three-peat in 1989, 1990 and 1991.
Zan Tabak, who was born on July 15, 1970, in Split,
was never a superstar, a player around whom teams
were built. But he was a player who always delivered
when coaches gave him minutes on the court. As all
big men, he got better with time and he played his best
seasons when older than 25, even though his earlier
seasons were already full of accolades. At 14 years old,
Tabak stood at 1.97 meters and despite practicing all
sports, his fate was basketball. He was lucky to enter
the club at the start of the great project in Jugoplastika.
His talent could not go unnoticed by the Yugoslav federation,
and in the summer of 1987, Tabak was part of the
FIBA European Championship for Cadets in Hungary.
He came back with the gold medal as the third-best
scorer on the team (8.9 points), after Arijan Komazec
(28.4) and Zivko Badzim (11.4). The coach was Janez
Drvaric from Slovenia.
The following year, at the 1988 European Championship
for Junior Men in Yugoslavia, I would see Zan
Tabak live for the first time. He was part of a great
team coached by Dusko Vujosevic, who was not much
older than his players. Komazec was the top scorer
again (27.0) and the line of big men was very strong:
Dzevad Alihodzic, Rastko Cvetkovic and Zan Tabak (6.5
points), while Predrag Danilovic (9.4) started to confirm
his great talent after two years without playing due to
bureaucratic problems with his club of origin, Bosna
Sarajevo. That was another gold medal for Tabak and
his teammates.
The Great Jugoplastika
When he got back to Split, Tabak was soon recruited
by coach Boza Maljkovic for the Jugoplastika senior
team. Toni Kukoc and Dino Radja, that generation’s leaders,
were two and three years older than Tabak, respectively,
but Maljkovic had the vision, the patience and the
courage to look for future talents. Nothing better could
have happened to young Tabak than training with Radja
and Goran Sobin and, starting in 1989, with Zoran Savic.
At 19 years old, after winning the cadet and junior European
championships, he was already a European champ
with his club. Yes, his contribution might have been symbolic,
but Zan Tabak’s name is on the Jugoplastika team
roster that was European champ in 1989. His 2 points
against Maccabi in the semifinal (87-77) and 2 against
Barcelona in the final (75-65) may not have been a lot,
but there he was, in the picture of the champs.
If the triumph of 1989 was a surprise, the repeat
of the title one year later didn’t surprise anyone. The
victims in Zaragoza were Limoges in the semis (101-
83) and Barcelona in the final (72-67). Tabak was still a
substitute center, but he was getting ready for a bigger
101 greats of european basketball
Zan Tabak
T