101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
mentor, together with Dejan’s elder brother, Zeljko, and
Nedeljko Ostarcevic – a former Zadar player already
living in the United States – went to Trieste to try to
convince Bogdan Tanjevic to sign Dejan.
“They put a lot of pressure on me, but I was a bit skeptical
because regulations only allowed for two foreigners
then, and normally you would sign Americans,” Tanjevic
recalled. “I asked, ‘How can I sign an 18-year-old kid as a
foreigner?’ Then, my good friend Cosic told me, ‘Don’t be
a Bosnian fool. Sign him and you won’t ever regret it.’ But
there was an added problem, his documentation. Dejan
was under contract and Zadar would not release him. Despite
all that, I decided to sign him. He spent one season
practicing with Stefanel Trieste without playing, but after
just two practices I realized what a diamond I had.”
Three finals lost
The debut of “White Magic,” a player standing 2.05
meters tall but with the ability to play all five positions, was
finally ready at the start of the 1992-93 season. Tanjevic
believes that of his four years in Italy, Bodiroga played his
best that first season. “He was an unbelievably mature
player for his age. He was a very generous man, always
worried about the team. He had no selfishness in him. I
remember he never took his first shot before minute 7 of
any game, because first he wanted to see how the team
was doing. Against Reggio Calabria, with a great Michael
Young, who would later lead Limoges to the EuroLeague
title, Bodiroga scored 51 points. Against the veteran but
still great player Michael Ray Richardson, he scored 38
points on 10 of 10 field goals. He was a very mature player,
versatile, who could score, pass, pull rebounds, guard...
It was a privilege to have him on my team.”
In the next three seasons in Trieste, Bodiroga lost three
Korac Cup finals. First in 1994 against PAOK Thessaloniki,
second against ALBA Berlin in 1995 and third against Efes
Pilsen in 1996. The reward arrived at the end of the 1995-
96 season with the triumph of Stefanel, which had moved
from Trieste to Milan, in the Italian League and Italian Cup.
The double crown was a prize for four years of hard work,
but it also marked a moment for change.
Bodiroga was almost guaranteed to be in the plans
of Yugoslav national team head coach Dusan Ivkovic for
the Barcelona 1992 Olympics. However, international
sanctions didn’t allow the team to take part in those
games. He would have to wait for three years for his official
debut on the national team. And he did it in style:
a gold medal at the 1995 EuroBasket in Athens with
12 points and 5 rebounds on average. The following
year, at the Atlanta Olympics, he won the silver medal
and confirmed to me there that the rumor was true: he
would join Real Madrid, coached by Zeljko Obradovic.
Even though he played really well and was chosen
MVP of the Spanish League in the 1997-98 season, the
results of the team those two years were rather poor.
There was, however, a Saporta Cup win, 78-64 against
Mash Verona in Nicosia, Cyprus, with 19 points by Alberto
Herreros and 17 points plus 9 rebounds from Bodiroga.
It was his first European trophy at the club level.
Cousin of Aca and Drazen Petrovic
On the eve of a game between Caja San Fernando
and Real Madrid, I published a story in the Spanish
newspaper El Mundo Deportivo that surprised many
people. Serbian Dejan Bodiroga and Croatian Aleksandar
Petrovic, then the coach at Caja San Fernando, were
close cousins. Of course, Aleksandar is the brother of
the late Drazen Petrovic, an icon of European basketball
history, which made Bodiroga a cousin of an all-time
great. The genealogical tree didn’t leave any doubts: De-
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