101 Greats of European Basketball

The first great
Slovenian
He never won a European cup. In fact,
he didn’t even play in any finals. He
didn’t win any other titles since they
didn’t even exist in his playing years.
But believe me, Ivo Daneu was one of
the greats. Daneu, who was born on
October 6, 1937, in Maribor, was the first Slovenian
basketball superstar. Slovenia is a small country,
with hardly two million people. But it has a long basketball
tradition and many greats played alongside
Daneu and after him. From the generations of Bors
Kristancic, Vital Eiselt, Miha Lokar, Marjan Kandus,
Bogdan Miler, Matija Dermastija, Borut Basin and Alosa
Zorga, continuing with Peter Vilfan and Jure Zdovc,
and leading us to modern stars like Rasho Nesterovic,
Primoz Brezec, Erazem Lorbek, Jaka Lakovic, Bostjan
Nachbar, Sasha Vujacic, Goran Dragic and, the latest,
Luka Doncic.
However, before all of them was Ivo Daneu, a
1.84-meter guard who offered whatever skill his team
needed. If the team needed points, he scored them. If
his teammates were in need of assists, he delivered in
spades. If he had to guard the other team’s best scorer,
there he was. He was one of those players who makes
his teammates better, even above their real potential.
In the old Yugoslavia, the name Daneu was quickly
matched with Radivoj Korac. Almost from the same
generation (Korac was born in 1938), they formed the
greatest duo of early Yugoslav basketball and they
were key cogs in the rise of that country’s basketball
from mediocrity to elite.
In his hometown of Maribor, which he had to leave
when his family was thrown out by the Germans, like
many other Slovenians, Daneu’s first love was tennis.
After that, he tried football until, as luck would have it, a
basketball hit him in the face. He was walking out of the
stadium and not paying any attention. So he stopped
by the basketball court, picked up the ball and scored.
He never thought of any other sport again.
His great talent didn’t go unnoticed at his local Maribor
club, Branik. Several first-division teams wanted to
sign him. Partizan Belgrade offered him “coal and food”
– a common remuneration in those years. But Ljubljana
was closer. He signed for Olimpija in 1956, and the
following year he led the team to its first title! With
Maribor, he was already on the national team, but it was
when he was with Olimpija that he was called – together
with teammates Marjan Kandus, Boris Kristancic, Bogdan
Miler and Matija Dermastija – by coach Aleksandar
Nikolic to be in the 1957 EuroBasket squad in Istanbul.
Yugoslavia finished sixth, and the scoring average of a
20-year-old Daneu was 6.5 points. But Nikolic knew he
had a leader for years to come.
Real Madrid wanted him
With Olimpija, Daneu won six Yugoslav League titles
between 1957 and 1970, but there is no reliable statistical
data. He took his team several times to the gates
of the European final. At the 1967 Final Four in Madrid,
together with Borut Basin (who scored 32 points), he
drove the Real Madrid defense crazy, even though the
Whites won 88-86. Santiago Bernabeu, the Real Madrid
president, gave an order: “Sign this number 10 immediately.”
No. 10 was, of course, Daneu. However, it was
101 greats of european basketball
Ivo Daneu
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