DUSKO VUJOSEVIC_31 Masterminds of European Basketball

The polisher
of talent
Dusko
Vujosevic
If the criterion for inclusion in this book was
solely a coach’s number of continental titles,
Dusko Vujosevic would not be counted among
the greatest. He only won one Korac Cup, with
Partizan Belgrade in 1989.
There are, however, many perspectives one
can take when regarding a basketball coach as one
of the greats. And although Vujosevic won more
than 20 domestic titles, I would say that his biggest
professional success is the vast number of great
players who became stars under his guidance.
There is no ranking for European coaches who
have “manufactured” the highest number of players,
but there’s no doubt Vujosevic would top that list.
Players like Vlade Divac, Zarko Paspalj, Sasa
Djordjevic, Predrag Danilovic, Predrag Drobnjak,
Kosta Perovic, Nikola Pekovic, Jan Vesely, Bogdan
Bogdanovic, Joffrey Lauvergne, Davis Bertans and
Ratko Varda all went through his hands before playing
in the NBA. And there are even more who had a huge
impact in Europe: Goran Grbovic, Zeljko Obradovic,
Ivo Nakic, Miroslav Beric, Dejan Tomasevic, Novica
Velickovic, Milenko Tepic, Dusan Kecman, Milos Vujanic,
Vladimir Lucic, Uros Tripkovic, Dejan Milojevic,
Luka Bogdanovic ... the list just goes on and on.
Coach by chance
We can “blame” the 1970 FIBA Basketball World
Cup in Ljubljana for having Vujosevic in basketball.
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Vladimir Stankovic
Yugoslavia won its first gold medal then, and an
11-year-old kid fell in love with basketball. Vujosevic
started playing in the youth categories of Partizan,
but after three years there, he was told he didn’t have
the talent to continue. It was a big disappointment for
him, but he once admitted to me, “Deep inside, I knew
I didn’t have the physical or technical qualities to be a
good player.”
He kept playing basketball with friends and schoolmates,
but the problem was that his school didn’t have
a gym for physical education. That was the indirect
reason why Vujosevic became a coach. He went to see
the principal of a neighboring school that had a gym and
asked for permission to practice and play school games
there. The director said yes, but in return he asked for
someone who “knew something about basketball” to
coach the team of his own school. Vujosevic offered
himself ... and his pupils won the school championship.
After that, he went to Partizan to recommend one
of his kids, Srdjan Dabic, who later would become
an outstanding player for Crvena Zvezda. Partizan
rejected Dabic, but offered Vujosevic a place as assistant
coach of the cadet team. He was still was in high
school, not even 18 years old.
During his first years as an apprentice coach, Vujosevic
was totally self-taught. He says the lack of information
he received from others forced him to think,
investigate, draw his own conclusions, live his own experience,
and learn from his own mistakes. From childhood,
Vujosevic was always a passionate reader, so he
read anything that fell into his hands. Nowadays, he
still loves books with a passion that he tries to transmit
to his players, giving them books as gifts for Christmas
or their birthdays. With Serbian players there was no
problem, but with players that didn’t speak the language,
like Vesely or Davis Bertans, it was not easy to
read “The Bridge over Drina”, from the Nobel laureate
Ivo Andric, or any other Serbian writer.
Despite studying law to give some satisfaction
to his parents, who expected him to work in a “serious
job”, Vujosevic knew that his future lay in being
a basketball coach. After a few formative courses,
which were compulsory in order to attend the coaching
school of professor Aleksandar Nikolic, Vujosevic
completed his education.
He always mentions Nikolic as the one who
showed him the most basketball secrets but doesn’t
forget two more people who influenced him during
his formation: Ranko Zeravica and Slobodan ‚Piva‘
Ivkovic, Dusan’s elder brother, who coached Radnicki
Belgrade all the way to the 1973 Yugoslav League title
from the second division.
Ivkovic had “an artist’s soul” because he was interested
in many more things apart from basketball,
something that Vujosevic shared with him – first
books and later paintings. Nowadays, Vujosevic owns
an impressive picture collection and thousands of
books. In fact, he was once chosen “Reader of the
Year” due to his compulsive buying of books.
On the bench, Vujosevic is, sometimes, another
person, much like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but he denies
this “double personality” and justifies it due to the high
pressure of the job. He sometimes loses his temper,
protests and gets technical fouls, even ejections. He
also yells at his players, but everybody knows he is just
like that. Thanks to this kind of behavior, he has many
fans, especially among Partizan supporters, but also
many detractors, not to say enemies. He always says
what he’s thinking, and it has cost him many times, but
he won’t change the way he is.
When Vujosevic first sat on the bench as head
coach of the Partizan senior team, as a substitute for
Vladislav Lucic during the 1986-87 season, he was
only 26 years old.
Two titles in two years
“My young age was an advantage because I had
nothing to lose, but on the other hand it was also a
disadvantage because I still had a lot to learn, not only
as a coach but also regarding public relations, especially
towards players,” Vujosevic told me once.
In that first season, he found a powerhouse in
the Partizan team, but it was his job to make those
players work with each other. Divac had just arrived
from Sloga Kraljevo, Paspalj from Buducnost, Djordjevic
was very young, just like Slavisa Koprivica and
Ivo Nakic. There were players with some more experience
like Goran Grbovic, Milenko Savovic and Zeljko
Obradovic.
Cibona Zagreb, with Drazen Petrovic, finished the
league with a 22-0 record, but fell in the semifinals
against Zvezda by 2-1. Its neighbor and “eternal en-
Dusko Vujosevic
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Vladimir Stankovic
emy” had done Partizan a big favor, and in the final,
Vujosevic’s team swept the series 2-0 to become
champion. That earned Partizan the right to be in the
following season’s EuroLeague, which had a new competition
system, including a league with eight teams
and a Final Four.
The international games of Partizan in the 1987-88
season became a social event in Belgrade. Attending
them meant prestige for those who could get a ticket,
and scalping became a lucrative business. Many powerhouses
went home defeated: FC Barcelona, Maccabi,
Aris, Milan, Cologne, Pau-Orthez and Nashua.
Partizan finished first with a 10-4 record and made it
to the Final Four in Ghent, Belgium, together with Aris
and Milan (both 9-5) and Maccabi (8-6). But Partizan
fell to Maccabi in the semis (82-87) before managing
to beat Aris for third place, 105-93.
That same year, Vujosevic became a European
champion with the Yugoslav junior national team. His
roster had a good generation, with Arijan Komazec,
Dzevad Alihodzic, Rastko Cvetkovic and, of course,
Predrag Danilovic.
In 1988-89, Partizan won the Korac Cup which, to
this day, is Vujosevic’s first and only European trophy
at the senior level. In the two-legged final, Cantu won
at home by 89-76 with Kent Benson (24 points) as
leader, while Divac (28) and Djordjevic (22) led Partizan.
In the second game, on March 22, 7,000 fans at
the Hala Sportova in Belgrade pushed Partizan to a
101-82 win and the title. Divac shined again with 30
points, Paspalj added 22 and Djordjevic 20.
Vujosevic moved from Belgrade and started the
following season in Spain with Granada, but his stay
there was short. He returned home to Partizan in
1990. In the summer of 1991 he coached the junior
national team again at the FIBA U19 Basketball World
Cup in Canada. It was a good team, with Dejan Bodiroga,
Zeljko Rebraca, Dragan Tarlac, Veljko Mrsic
and Nikola Loncar, and it finished fourth. In 1991-92,
Vujosevic coached his old team’s arch-rival, Crvena
Zvezda, and after that, he spent five seasons in Italy:
three with Brescia and two with Pistoia.
His stay there was due to his favorite player, Danilovic.
When the player moved from Bosna Sarajevo to
Partizan at 16 years old, Vujosevic became his second
father, mentor and, of course, coach. Since Danilovic
could not play for two years because Bosna wouldn’t
release the documentation, Vujosevic did a lot of individual
work with him. In the second year, Danilovic
played at a high school in the United States, where
years later he would return to join the NBA. When
Danilovic made his deal with Kinder Bologna in 1992,
he set one condition: the club had to find a job for his
friend, Vujosevic. And Kinder delivered.
Triumphal comeback
When Vujosevic went back to Belgrade, the first
job he was offered was coaching Radnicki. After two
good seasons there, he was back to Partizan in 2001
and he stayed there until 2015, with a brief absence to
coach CSKA Moscow.
Vujosevic is, without a doubt, a great coach, but he
also needs an environment that knows him and gives
him time to work. He is the marathon coach: he needs
time, sometimes a long time, to get to the desired
result because the process of forming the players
is long and requires patience. In Partizan, he always
had that kind of credit; there were some disastrous
EuroLeague seasons, but nobody questioned him.
Elsewhere, this kind of thing is not understood, and
results dominate the situation. But to grow a reserve
of young players, you need patience.
Vujosevic is a specialist with young talent. He’s
not afraid to play young kids in big situations. Before
winning some important games, he had to lose some
important games, but Vujosevic knew that was the
only way. When Danilovic became Partizan president,
support was guaranteed. Vujosevic always polished
young talent that later had to be sold in order to get
some much-needed money for the club.
In 2003, Vujosevic was Serbia and Montenegro
national team coach at the EuroBasket in Sweden,
but without Bodiroga or Tomasevic, and then with
Predrag Stojakovic injured before the quarterfinals,
Yugoslavia could only finish sixth. He actually ended
up coaching three different national teams: Serbia &
Montenegro, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In 2009, he got the top recognition in Europe, the
Alexander Gomelskiy award as Coach of the Year in
the EuroLeague, and the following season he took
Partizan to the Final Four in Paris, losing both games
in overtime. In the semis, Partizan fell to Olympiacos
and then CSKA won the third-place game.
Talking about his basketball creed, he says he only
believes in the “authority of wisdom” but complains
that currently there are too many “bad students.” His
first rule is: “Practice is the foundation for everything.
It is more important than games, because games are
where you apply what you practice.”
Sisyphus of basketball
Vujosevic has never hesitated to copy good things
from colleagues, but he says he only “buys” original
ideas, and that those who inherit something usually
don’t appreciate what they have. He admits that he
is strict and demanding with his players, but he also
gives a lot. He believes in hierarchy at work and says
that his players have freedom but always inside the
rules. For him, the essence of freedom is respect for
the rules.
On the subject of working abroad, he once told me
something that was quoted often later: “There’s no
safe country for our job. The only safe place on Earth
is two meters under the land.” (The sentence makes
more sense in Serbian where the same word, “zemlja”
both means country and land.)
He was once called Sisyphus because of his “useless
work”, since Partizan always sold his best pupils.
But, faithful to his philosophy, he told me:
“I don’t know why people think Sisyphus did anything
wrong. His job was honest, he was a courageous
man, a hero. I don’t resent starting every season from
scratch because it’s challenging and I do it with enthusiasm
and love.”
Vujosevic also quotes a late Croatian poet and singer
Arsen Dedic, who said, “My job is taking me to the
top, from where I will fall.” Vujosevic adds that, “If you
manage to reach the top, the fall can be wonderful.”
I never thought he would reply to this, but when
I asked him about the best players he ever coached,
he didn’t give me a full team, but he did mention five
names without which such an imaginary team would
be impossible.
“It’s a tough question, but I am sure we would have
Vlade Divac, Zarko Paspalj, Predrag Danilovic, Goran
Grbovic and Sasa Djordjevic.”
And on the bench, Dusko Vujosevic, talent polisher
supreme.
Dusko Vujosevic
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