101 Greats of European Basketball

A great from the
shadows
There was a time when European basketball
was being played in Syria, which even hosted
the 1979 FIBA U16 European Championship.
In the title game played in Damascus,
Yugoslavia defeated Italy 103-100 and the
hero of the game was one Zoran Cutura
(CHUH-tu-rah), who scored 41 points. Antonello Riva
and Alberto Tonut starred for Italy. Earlier in the tournament,
against a strong Spain squad led by Fernando
Martin and Andres Jimenez, Cutura scored 30 points
in an 89-88 win. His average for the tourney was an
impressive 23.9 points. Cutura was the best scorer and
the MVP, even though not officially. Some other very
good players who came out of this generation were Nebojsa
Zorkic, Srdjan Dabic and Marko Ivanovic, but the
only high-profile star was Cutura himself.
Born in Zagreb on March 12, 1962, Cutura started
playing basketball in school, where the physical education
teacher noticed his height (2.02 meters) and sent
him to the Industromontaza club, where he started
taking basketball more seriously. The flawless scouting
system run by the Yugoslav federation never let any
talents slip from their sight. That’s the only explanation
for how a kid from a second division team became the
leader of the national team. Cutura played in Industromontaza
for three years, between 1978 and 1981. He
then signed for the Cibona team of Mirko Novosel, who
had just started building the finest opus of his career as
a coach: the Great Cibona.
“Few people know that Cutura had a deal with Zadar.
Fortunately, I managed to stop him from leaving. I convinced
him that he had to stay home and be a part of my
project,” the legendary coach recalled in 2014.
Novosel put his team together step by step, as if
building a mosaic. The key piece at the start of a long
journey was the arrival of Kresimir Cosic, already a
veteran, but always a genius. From Dubrovnik arrived
Andro Knego; from Sibenik came Aleksandar Petrovic
first and then his brother Drazen. Ivo Nakic came from
Rijeka and Branko Vukicevic from OKK Belgrade. The
culmination of the process would be Cibona’s back-toback
European crowns in 1985 and 1986. But even before
that, Cutura’s career experienced other important
moments.
Triple crown in the first season
Cutura competed at the first FIBA U19 Basketball
World Cup in Brazil in 1979. A good Yugoslav team with
Zeljko Obradovic, Goran Grbovic, Zoran Radovic and
Cutura (18.3 points) finished fourth. The following year,
at the 1980 FIBA U18 European Championship in Celje,
Yugoslavia was second behind the USSR. Cutura was not
just a name anymore, but a quality player. Against Italy, he
scored 29 points and he averaged 22.8 for the tourney.
“Zoran always had a sixth sense for getting the ball,”
Novosel explained. “He was not a tall man, he was not
athletic. He had the height of a small forward, but he
somehow sensed where the ball would go and he also
had great timing for rebounds. At the start of his career,
he practiced a lot at two-on-two and ‘three, three, three,’
even on street playgrounds. And that helped him a lot.”
In his first season with Cibona, Cutura started winning
titles. Cibona defeated Bosna Sarajevo, the reigning
European champ that year, in the Yugoslav Cup final,
Zoran Cutura
101 greats of european basketball
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