101 Greats of European Basketball

Vladimir Stankovic
and human values, something that was not possible
with other rivals.”
Natural-born talent
Cosic was born in Zagreb on November 26, 1948.
However, he grew up in Zadar, a Croatian city on the
Dalmatian coast with a great basketball tradition. People
in Zadar have a saying: “God created man and Zadar
created basketball.” Zadar produced many great
players, but the most famous two were Josip Gjergja
and Kresimir Cosic. When Cosic, at 16 years old, started
in Zadar’s first team, Gjergja was the star, an international
player for Yugoslavia and an idol of the fans.
The guard-center connection worked flawlessly and
Gjergja helped Cosic, who at 18 became a member of
the national team and won his first silver medal at the
1967 World Cup in Uruguay. The following year, at the
Mexico Olympics, he also won the silver medal. With
Zadar, he won three Yugoslav Leagues: 1965, 1967
and 1968. In the summer of 1968, Cosic was on a European
team with Veikko Vainio from Finland and their
meeting changed his life. Vainio, a student at Brigham
Young University, told him about life in college and
the life of Mormons. Cosic, who until then was sort of
an enfant terrible, a long-haired smoker and “lover of
life”, accepted the invitation and moved to the United
States in 1969.
That’s why Ranko Zeravica, the coach who called
Cosic to the national team at age 17, said the following
words on March 6, 2006, when Cosic’s No.11 became
just the second jersey, after Danny Ainge’s, to be retired
at Brigham Young: “Yugoslavia had problems with
Cosic before he came here because he was underdeveloped
as a person and a player. But he returned to
Yugoslavia a complete man and player. He came back to
Yugoslavia as a well-respected man. He brought back
from BYU an outstanding way of behaving.”
In three years at BYU, always wearing number 11,
Cosic averaged 19.1 points and 11.6 rebounds. He was
an idol for the fans, the man who made it possible for
a new arena with a capacity of more than 20,000 spectators
to be built. He was the first non-American ever
chosen to the All-American team and a strong candidate
for the NBA. He was chosen by Portland with pick No.
144 in the 10th round of the 1972 draft, the year that
the number one and two picks were LaRue Martin and
Bob McAdoo, respectively. Curiously, Cosic was drafted
again the following year by the Los Angeles Lakers with
the 73rd pick, but he never played in the NBA. He was
too patriotic to give up his club of origin and his national
team, with which he soon started winning everything.
After two silver medals at the 1969 and 1971 EuroBaskets,
Yugoslavia finally won its first gold medal in 1973
in Barcelona with Mirko Novosel on the bench. Novosel’s
merit was his introduction of young talent to the team,
including Dragan Kicanovic, Drazen Dalipagic and Zoran
Slavnic. But the soul of that team was Cosic. He would
lead Yugoslavia to EuroBasket titles in 1975 and 1977, a
World Cup silver in 1974 and a gold in 1978, Olympics
silver at Montreal in 1976 and gold at Moscow in 1980.
His international career with Yugoslavia ended with
14 medals. Only Sergei Belov of the Soviet Union has
more medals than Cosic. In 305 games (an absolute
record) with the Yugoslav team, Cosic scored 3,180
points, ranking him third, after Dalipagic with 3,700 and
Kicanovic with 3,300.
Back to European club ball, respecting all the rules of
his new Mormon religion, Cosic won two more Yugoslav
League titles with Zadar, in 1974 and 1975. From 1976
to 1978, he was player-coach with Olimpija Ljubljana.
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