101 Greats of European Basketball

The king of
rebounds
I
met Mirsad Turkcan in December of 1994 when I
went by the Calderon Hotel in Barcelona to write a
preview for the newspaper I was working for at the
time, Mundo Deportivo, for that week’s EuroLeague
game between FC Barcelona and Efes Pilsen.
I got there with the newspaper in my hands. While I
was in reception, I was talking to Efes coach Aydin Ors
and a young player from the Turkish team asked me,
in English, if he could have a look at the paper. Right
away, I heard a comment from him in pure Serbian.
He was Mirsad Turkcan, a young talent of Efes Pilsen,
who was already known in the basketball circles due
to his 16.6-point average at the FIBA European Championship
for Junior Men, played the previous summer
in Tel Aviv. Until then, I never had the chance to meet
him because in 1992, his getaway to Istanbul from Novi
Pazar, the Serbian city where he was born on June 7,
1976, happened at almost the same time as mine to
Barcelona. Turkcan was born under the name Jahovic
in a rather well-known family of doctors in Novi Pazar,
the main city in the region of Sandzak, with a majority
Muslim population. One of his sisters follows the family
tradition and is a doctor in Belgrade, while the other,
Emina, is a well-known singer both in Serbia and Turkey,
where she lives with her husband, the famous Turkish
singer Mustafa Sandal.
Mirsad’s thing was neither medicine nor music.
His destiny was in sports, specifically, basketball. As a
young talent, he was a candidate to play for all the big
teams in Yugoslavia. The fastest one to catch him was
Bosna, and young Mirsad ended up in Sarajevo. However,
in the spring of 1992, with the coming war in sight,
the Efes Pilsen scouts convinced his family to let him relocate
to Istanbul. So Mirsad Jahovic, who would soon
have a Turkish passport and the name Turkcan, started
his great adventure on the Bosphorus. Between 1992
and 2012, the year when he retired, many things happened.
Triumph in the Korac Cup
Mirsad Turkcan’s career didn’t develop at lightning
speed. It went step by step, improving season after
season. From the very start of his career, his main
weapon was rebounds. Standing at 2.06 meters, his
height didn’t precisely stand out for a basketball player,
but his jumping capabilities together with great timing
gave him, I’d say, 10 centimeters more. He usually won
rebounding duels with players much bigger than him. In
that 1994-95 season, his first on the senior team at Efes,
his numbers in 12 EuroLeague games were discreet,
2.2 points and 1.7 rebounds in 5.7 minutes on the floor.
In the summer of 1995, he made his debut in the
Turkish national team at the 1995 EuroBasket in Athens.
With 8.3 points and 7.5 rebounds, he was one of
the young prospects that stood out the most.
In the 1995-96 season, Turkcan was already a staple
on the competitive Efes Pilsen team, which played the
Korac Cup. Petar Naumoski, Ufuk Sarica, Conrad McRae,
Volkan Aydin, Tamer Oyguc, Murat Evliyaoglu, Turkcan
and the rest built a great team that, on its way to the
title game, had beaten several strong opponents, like
Maccabi Rishon, Varese, Panionios, Fenerbahce and
Fortitudo Bologna. The opponent in the final would
be Olimpia Milano, which really was Stefanel Trieste
101 greats of european basketball
Mirsad Turkcan
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