fall of "yugoslavian" basketball

[pohani komarac]

giricek, vujcic, bagaric, zizic, kasun, planinic, popovic, tomas and ukic are best players ( or one of best ) in all that medal tournaments. and only lamonica, dovidavicius and drabikovsky stand between them and medal ( probably gold ) in eb 2005. and who knows what would be later. maybe because of that planinic becomes epic choker. tomas gain role player mentality. giricek and vujcic retairs from nt....

domination in youth tournaments does not means that all players would be great players but certainly does not meas that team whic takes 12. place have more then one, two solid players

80.-81. generation is most trophy one in yuth basketball, and gived stojic, bagaric, sundov, kasun....and kasun was bench warmer who could only dunk

86.-87. generation couldn't qualify to u-ec, a qualifycations were in croatia and barac at that time was 210 cetar, not having place in team, whille tomic just reached 215 and 22kg and couldn't play even against cadets

so, when you look at players at yuth level you don't look how good they are, but you look what they have that they will be able to translate on senior level, what they won't be able to translate on senior lever and where is room and how much do they have room to impruve

when i said 2 years ago i doubt prostran will not ipruve and become anything better then miljan pavkovic, not to metnion star i was atacked by lot of people, especially by his brother

he has evrything of star, even size isn't problem, rather then very week structure of his body. and 90.-91. generation was good, mostley because of his playmaking and leadership. playmaking that any of our pg's can dream about

[euskadi]

80.-81. generation is most trophy one in yuth basketball, and gived stojic, bagaric, sundov, kasun....and kasun was bench warmer who could only dunk

86.-87. generation couldn't qualify to u-ec, a qualifycations were in croatia and barac at that time was 210 cetar, not having place in team, whille tomic just reached 215 and 22kg and couldn't play even against cadets

so, when you look at players at yuth level you don't look how good they are, but you look what they have that they will be able to translate on senior level, what they won't be able to translate on senior lever and where is room and how much do they have room to impruve

when i said 2 years ago i doubt prostran will not ipruve and become anything better then miljan pavkovic, not to metnion star i was atacked by lot of people, especially by his brother

he has evrything of star, even size isn't problem, rather then very week structure of his body. and 90.-91. generation was good, mostley because of his playmaking and leadership. playmaking that any of our pg's can dream about

agree. being dominant in youth does not mean that you will translate that in senior level. and there is posibility that one weak youth team has extra talented player

but, i give you slovenian example... all their stars dominate in youth level. even better spain, they won all they can. serbian 86. , 87 and 88. generation.... most of curent superstars or stars dominate in youth competition. with team or at least by individual stats. so that youth competitions can show as who could be star.

our generation is too young. but if they manage to dominate till u20 championship then we could expect something big

[Southpaw]

do you see Pau or Navarro in any of these players mentioned?



I think we are all over that..
simply, the yugoslav team from the 90's would probably be best team ever in history of basketball.. there I said it, better then dream team..
and since that team fall apart, making a new one even if just on paper looks really pointless..

Better than Dream Team. LMAO. Dream on.

[Legend]

the problem with ex-yu basketball is the it's going down the same path as its football. As soon as someone shows any talent agents jump in and dictate the players life.

secondly all of the so called great masters of ex-yu basketball haven't been teaching younger generations instead they teach foreign teams and countries.

thirdly the poor state of life and economy of the ex-yu countries has caused the sport federations great deal of pain as high levels of corruption have infiltrated the organizations. as long as that's the case basketball and every other sport is slowly going to die in ex-yu.

fourthly the top teams aren't producing enough talents but at the same time they want results so they go for a simple and quick fix and that's to bring in average to slightly above average foreigners.So the talents that these teams do have get to warm the bench for entire season just so that the teams can have some type of a good result in europe. The talents that do play for smaller teams are quickly sold to european teams and so they get to experience bench warming in different countries

Partizan in its last 10 years of domination has only contributed 2 worthy NT players in Velickovic and Krstic... that's completely ridiculous from a team that has had many talents go through their ranks. the latest Partizan victim is Branisalav Djekic and i'm afraid that the same thing is going to happen to Bogdanovic and Miljenovic....

Dusan Kecman played in every single game(67) last season with 1518 minutes in total.
Bogdan Bogdanovic on other hand played 14 games with 87 minutes in total.

Why does Kecman a 34 year old player get that many minutes while a great prospect in Bogdanovic gets to warm the bench?

btw Djekic played 27 games for a total of 262 minutes. WOW!

the stats come from the offical Partizan website

[tiro1]

Wasn't there a thread like that a couple of years back? Or was it more?

[Steve187]

I was thinking...
If the ex-Yugoslavian countries somehow were able to make a united basketball team under the management of a good coach (say Duda) they would pretty much be unbeatable.

It's not as if there is less talent than the time of Divac and Petrovic it's mostly that the talent is almost evenly fragmented. I mean 6 countries out of (what was) a country no bigger than Spain? Gimme a break

Think about it, a united Yugoslavian team would be full in all positions. A "country" roughly the size of Spain *still* can produce a better team than Spain... if only it was possible it would be an interesting sight to see.

[damelo]

Very nice and complete analysis. But ...

It is actually Mirotic who wants to play for Spain.
He lives there since he was 14 years old and feels like a Spaniard.

So, just take it as a kickback for all the Spanish articles about how many French players are not born in france

If any player that can not make Team USA 1 say they want to play, Spanish Fed will probably accept them and Spain may not need Gasols and Navarro.

Sorry for Off Topic, I'm getting back to the subject after that.

[damelo]

what nation has to do with country?

True. The question was not posed the right way.

How can the national feeling transpose in the Balkans today? There are lots of players who could be from different countries. What is the impact of separation of Serbia and Montenegro, for example, in this field?

Since many players do not come to NT, is it a major factor?

(When you see these French guys, they are all like crazy for France, saying how proud they are, looking to go to the Olympics at any price, etc...)

[pimpekaustas]

I mean 6 countries out of (what was) a country no bigger than Spain? Gimme a break

"country" roughly the size of Spain *still* can produce a better team than Spain...

for the hundredth time spain has 46 milion people, ex yu countries 23 milions

[Perseus]

Tesla,

we use the word inat too,we have a proverb (to ginati vgazi mati) i don't know if i can translate it properly

"the inat plucks out eye"

[pohani komarac]

"inat" is actually turkish word

in Croatia in Dalmatia they use "Dišpet", (deshpet), as similar meanig

curentley macedonia from "inat" just told europe. f... of all, we are better and we will beat you you like it or not

and that is fact, balkanians function much better when evrything is against them

[pohani komarac]

True. The question was not posed the right way.

How can the national feeling transpose in the Balkans today? There are lots of players who could be from different countries. What is the impact of separation of Serbia and Montenegro, for example, in this field?

Since many players do not come to NT, is it a major factor?

(When you see these French guys, they are all like crazy for France, saying how proud they are, looking to go to the Olympics at any price, etc...)

when talking about national fealings

literlly, from vilage to vilage is difrent

curently probably in macedonia they have strongest national feelings, from "inat" because of their name and indentity problems....so greeks, if you wannt them to change their name be good to them and support them

probably with them go western herzegovina croats, again from "inat"


personally i belive lot of players absentes are more conected to thretment of people. they just get sick of it

when they are doing good, people give them lot of love. when things are going down...uh,...sometimes it goes that far that they get beaten. also when doing good at first evrybody loves them, but one thing balkanians can't forgive is other man happines and sucses. you would think when radja, kukoc, ivanisevic wallk trough streets of croatia you would assume evryone says high, wannt to take picture with them etc.? wrong. some times it is like that, but mostley people would just roll their eyes and say to their friend: here is that cheep bustard". even bogut gets same tretment in us from croatian comunity. only drazen petrovic and kreso cosic are ones that are never spit on and it's only because they are dead. sounds brutaly, but truth

[Perseus]

so greeks, if you wannt them to change their name be good to them and support them

we supported them a lot ,we even gave them military aid,but here in Greece we say

ουδεις πιο αχαριστος του ευεργετηθεντος

i can't translate this one maybe the other Greeks...

[Alvertis4]

we supported them a lot ,we even gave them military aid,but here in Greece we say

ουδεις πιο αχαριστος του ευεργετηθεντος

i can't translate this one maybe the other Greeks...

No one is worse than the benefited ungrateful

[Steve187]

for the hundredth time spain has 46 milion people, ex yu countries 23 milions

I know I meant *size* (how big it is on the map), not population-wise. Having players coming from a larger territory (i.e. a greater genetic pool), is always better than having 10 millions in one city.

In the case of Yugoslavia, you would have Central Europe (Slovenia), Dinaric Alps (many countries), down to the territory of Macedonia. A pan-western Balkans' dream team. Too bad that I won't see it in my lifetime (and I was too young to remember the old united Yugoslavian team)... also maybe it's the only way for you guys to become serious contenders for the gold (on ALL levels) again.