101 Greats of European Basketball

75 NBA games wearing Miami and Dallas jerseys, he averaged
12.8 points while making 37.9% of his three-pointers.
His stellar moment arrived in a game against New
York in which he scored 21 points on 7 of 7 threes! He
told me that he had better games, with 30 or 35 points,
but that playing at Madison Square Garden was special.
Despite playing solid basketball and being well regarded,
Danilovic didn’t like the NBA or the American
lifestyle so much. On February 1, 1997, I got a scoop:
Sasha Danilovic was heading back to Europe. Not many
people believed it, but it was confirmed in the end.
Before coming back, not to leave America empty-handed,
he played with Yugoslavia at the 1996 Olympics in
Atlanta. Danilovic averaged 16.8 points as Yugoslavia
took home the silver medal.
Magic moments
In the summer of 1997, back in Europe, Danilovic won
his fourth EuroBasket title in Barcelona – four for four!
He contributed 15.0 points on average and had 10 in a
61-49 title-game win over Italy, which was coached by...
Messina. For the 1997-98 season, Danilovic was back
again with Bologna and played a brilliant season. First,
in April 1988, Kinder won its first EuroLeague title in the
Final Four played in Barcelona. In the title game, Kinder
defeated AEK Athens 58-44 with Antoine Rigaudeau as
its best scorer, with 14 points. Danilovic added 13 points
plus 5 boards. There were also Savic, Hugo Sconochini,
Alessandro Abbio, Augusto Binelli, Alessandro Frosini
and, of course, Ettore Messina. Danilovic’s averages in the
EuroLeague were 17.5 points, 3.8 boards and 3.2 assists.
But the best was yet to come. In the finale of the Italian
League playoff finals, with 16 seconds to go in Game
5, Kinder’s archrival Fortitudo Bologna was ahead by 4
points. Done deal, right? For everyone else, maybe, but
not for Sasha. In a dream play, he shot from 8 meters
and hit the three-pointer. But Dominique Wilkins, a
former NBA star with more than 20,000 points in the
league, put his hand where he was not supposed to. He
fouled Sasha on the shot and Danilovic got the extra
free throw. Of course, he made the shot and overtime
was in order. Danilovic shined in the extra session with
2 points, an assist for Binelli, another for Radoslav
Nesterovic, then a three-pointer. Danilovic played 43
of the 45 minutes and, with 20 points, was the hero of
the game that Kinder won 86-77. Danilovic was chosen
MVP of the season.
In the following season, 1998-99, Danilovic didn’t
win anything with Kinder, but with Yugoslavia he won
his fifth medal at the 1999 EuroBasket in France – this
time a bronze. There, in France, he gave me a long interview
in which he told me that he would not play for
much longer. I admit I didn’t believe it because he was
only 29 years old. But, after losing one of the few finals
in his career – the Saporta Cup against AEK Athens on
April 11, 2000, by the score of 76-83 – and after the fall
of Yugoslavia in the quarterfinals of the 2000 Sydney
Olympics against Steve Nash’s Canada, Danilovic decided
to retire. At 30 years old!
Kinder organized a big farewell to Danilovic by playing
his last game against Partizan. I had the pleasure and privilege
to attend the event as a EuroLeague representative.
His character and qualities are explained here by
Zoran Savic, his teammate with Kinder and the Yugoslav
team:
“Sasha was the man for the big games! The finals
and the decisive games were his thing and inspired him
in a special way. He was an unbelievable fighter.
Predrag Danilovic
101 greats of european basketball
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