101 Greats of European Basketball

The sky jumper
The history of Drazen Dalipagic is not
your typical one, in which a great young
talent has a brilliant junior career, then
explodes later as a senior and meets all
expectations. Simply put, Dalipagic was
always a senior because at the age when
Kresimir Cosic, Dragan Kicanovic, Zoran Slavnic,
Mirza Delibasic and the rest were exploding into basketball
and well before he would join them and form a
great Yugoslavian national team, Dalipagic was playing
... football. His nickname precisely comes from his
football days. A central defender of FC Velez Mostar
was called Prajo – and for some reason, Dalipagic also
took that name, which in Belgrade would later become
“Praja” (pronounced, pra-ya).
Dalipagic, who was born on November 27, 1951 in
Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, came into basketball
by chance. But with a talent for all ball sports, he soon
became the best player in Lokomotiva, the local team
from Mostar. His talent took him to the Bosnia-Herzegovina
national team, with whom, in a tourney played
in Zvornik of his native country, he destroyed Serbia in
front of Ranko Zeravica, then the coach of Yugoslavia
and the future Partizan coach starting in 1972. What
Zeravica saw in Dalipagic was already known among
Yugoslav scouts. Everybody wanted to sign him. Jugoplastika
took the lead in that race and the young player
even got some advance money from the deal. But Partizan
persevered. At the end of the 1970-71 season, Partizan
descended into the second division, but thanks to
a change in the competition system, the team got back
to the first division for the start of the next one because
the second division had been played through the summer.
Djordje Colovic, a smart Partizan man, convinced
Dalipagic to travel to Belgrade by telling him about the
club’s big plans to build a great team with Zeravica on
the bench. Dalipagic would only accept under one condition:
that Partizan was back in the first division. When
Partizan met its side of the deal, Dalipagic did the same,
even though breaking his agreement with Jugoplastika
cost the player a six-month suspension from the Bosnian
federation. He made his debut on the road against
Zadar with only 3 points. But in the debut in front of his
own fans, against Lokomotiva Zagreb (the future Cibona),
he scored 21. That was the start of a brilliant career
that would end at Crvena Zvezda in the 1990-91 season
with the legendary Praja at 39 years of age.
Shoot and jump
Praja was not as talented as Cosic, as imaginative
as Kicanovic, as elegant as Delibasic or as smart on the
court as Slavnic. But he had two things that turned him
into one of the best scorers ever. He could shoot and rebound.
Or jump and shoot. Two inseparable elements.
He jumped to grab the ball, he jumped to take a shot,
especially from the corner, his favorite spot. We can add
a third element, related to rebounds: dunks. His were
spectacular, a combination of strength, quickness, confidence
and, also, a great understanding with Dragan
Kicanovic, who dished special assists to make Praja’s
alley-oops easier. The press in Belgrade nicknamed him
“The Sky Jumper”.
After the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Zeravica
left the national team to build a great Partizan. Dalipagic
was the first piece of the puzzle. In 1973, Kicanovic
joined the team, and one of the best Yugoslavian
101 greats of european basketball
Drazen Dalipagic
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