Croatia and Serbia: A basketball legacy divided

I remember lying in a grey hospital bed in Travnik, Bosnia, barely able to walk and formulate coherent sentences, with IV fluid being pumped into my tiny body.

My father hovered above me, hoping the doctors knew what was wrong. I had been vomiting all day from a virus that was spreading throughout our town. My father says he remembers holding me in his arms, thinking his youngest son was going to die following the most miserable four years of his life, when he was forced to go to war against his brother in-laws.

He had watched as people he loved tore each other apart because they practiced different religions. He had watched as women and children were brutally slaughtered in the street. And now he thought he might watch me die in his arms.

Like any other child, I was terrified.

I clung to my dad, confused and worried about what was going to happen to me. The doctors told my father that he had to sign some release forms if he was going to leave me alone at the hospital. He had no choice. I asked my dad where he was going and he told me that he would return in a few minutes. He was just going to buy me some Stobi Flips at Tarik’s — a local convenience store right down the block.

My mom had apparently stopped by the hospital later that evening to drop off new pajamas, juice and of course, Stobi Flips. I never saw any of it. The nurses or whoever received the items from my mom stole it all. My mom, with her chin quivering and eyes filled with tears, told me she didn’t know how she scraped together the few bucks to buy the things that were stolen.

I guess they needed it more than I did.

*****

On September 14, 2014, I plopped onto my couch in New York, opened up a bag of Stobi Flips and prepared to watch the United States continue their worldwide basketball dominance against
Serbia in the FIBA World Cup Final.

For the first couple of minutes, it looked like the Serbian team would be able to put together a competitive game of basketball against the youthful USA team. The crafty Milos Teodosic spoon fed his big man — Miroslav Raduljica — inside, and Nemanja Bjelica remained a threat from the perimeter. The Serbian team led 14–7 and my brother looked at me as if to say, “Is this really happening?”

My brother, who’s four years older than me, experienced the Yugoslavian civil war first-hand. He’s old enough to remember my dad leaving and my mom — all 100 pounds of her — praying he would return home safely. He’s old enough to remember walking to school among bombs and explosions as people hurled slurs towards him and my mother. My mom, a Serb, was looked down upon in central Bosnia for having married a Muslim man.

And here I was, sitting with my brother in the comfort of a New York home watching Serbia take on the United States.

Conflicted, I had no idea who to root for.

With just three family members in the U.S. — my parents and my brother — virtually everything I loved remained back in the former Yugoslavia region, dispersed all around Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. But the United States had granted me freedoms that my parents couldn’t even fathom. They were allowed to practice (or choose not to practice) any religion they wanted and no one would threaten to kill them for it. I had luckily avoided the vast majority of the discrimination since I essentially grew up in the states, often taking the freedoms I have for granted.

The game was competitive for the first few minutes, but it didn’t take long before the U.S. began to out-talent the Serbian team. Kyrie Irving — a young, spry American on the verge of superstardom — led the team to a 129–92 victory in Spain.

The way those players performed on the court was beautiful. James Harden and Stephen Curry pranced around the court like ballet dancers, sinking jumpers from deep and spinning their way straight to the basket. Team USA, as expected, was simply too much for Serbia — and the rest of the world — to handle.

Throughout the course of the game, I couldn’t help but think of what could’ve been. Currently, there’s no team on the planet that can legitimately challenge the United States on a national basketball stage. Jerry Colangelo and the rest of the Team USA basketball staff has created a pool of players that is comprised of All-Star, future Hall-of-Fame talent that the rest of the world simply cannot compete with (this year’s apathetic defensive effort aside).

That wasn’t always the case, though.

From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, the Yugoslavian national basketball team was considered a powerhouse. Having won three gold medals in three decades in the FIBA World Cup along with Olympic gold in the 1980 Summer Olympics, the Yugoslavian basketball team is one of the most accomplished in history. The defunct nation of Yugoslavia has garnered the third most medals in Olympic basketball history, right behind the USA and Soviet Union.

Unless you’re a basketball historian or fan of obscure players, most of Yugoslavia’s past success has been forgotten about. Hell, most people don’t even know such a country existed. But for those who study the game and scout overseas, like ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla, the accomplishments of the nation are still very relevant.

Fraschilla, who coached at Reebok and Adidas Euro Camp in Treviso, Italy for eight years — the international version of the NBA Draft Combine — had been around dozens of Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian basketball prospects. Prior to the Yugoslavian civil war in the early 1990s, Fraschilla remembers being surrounded by coaches who traveled to the United States with hopes of broadening their basketball knowledge. In the 1960s, Yugoslavian coaches came to the states to develop their skills with former Providence coach Dave Gavitt. The word about the basketball talent in Yugoslavia quickly spread and prospects began to emerge.

Kresimir Cosic, who came to the states in the 1970s, was one of the first Yugoslavian prospects to have success in the United States. After a popular stint at BYU, Cosic played in four Olympics and coached in the world event too

As an assistant coach at Ohio State under Hall-of-Famer Gary Williams, who coached Team USA for the junior world championships, Fraschilla remembers hearing about that talent that was blossoming overseas.

“We sent a great team over to Italy for the world championships and I remember Gary Williams coming back and Yugoslavia beat the USA,” Fraschilla said in a phone interview.

“He came back and told me how good that team was. [Drazen] Petrovic was on the team. [Vlade] Divac was on the team. But Gary said ‘there’s this 6-10 or 6-11 left-handed kid by the name of Toni Kukoc, who didn’t miss a shot against us.’ Of course, all of those guys went on to play in the NBA in the 90’s. From those experiences, my interest in following basketball in that region grew.”

An outsider looking into the horrors that were occurring overseas, Fraschilla remembers watching the news coverage as a once-thriving nation began to wither away.

“It became clear to me with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the difficulties in the Balkans, that basketball would change forever as it did in northern Europe. It was devastating for basketball,” he said. “You had teammates that wound up not speaking together. They were now enemies.”

The countries that made up former Yugoslavia have continued to play well on the world stage, with Serbia and Croatia leading the way. But they may never have the chance to become the basketball powerhouse they could have been.

In a world without conflict, NBA players like Goran Dragic, Jusuf Nurkic, Nikola Pekovic, Damjan Rudez, Beno Udrih, Sasha Vujacic, Dario Saric, Mirza Teletovic, Nikola Jokic, Nemanja Bjelica, Mario Hezonja, and Nikola Vucevic would all put on red-white-blue Yugoslavian jerseys and compete against the other top teams in the world. The countries that formerly comprised Yugoslavia continue to produce NBA prospects with Dragan Bender, Ante Zizic, Rade Zagorac, and Ivica Zubac all being selected in this year’s NBA Draft.

During the period of war and after, a unified Yugoslavia could have produced one of the most talented teams in the world. Peja Stojakovic, a three-time NBA All-Star, and Vlade Divac, a FIBA Hall-of-Fame nominee, both of whom helped lead the Sacramento Kings to the 2002 Western Conference Finals, could have hypothetically shared the court with Toni Kukoc, who was an integral part of the Chicago Bulls’ championship success in the mid 90’s. Dino Radja, an NBA All-Rookie member in 1994, would have anchored the frontcourt with Divac. Because of the split, the potential team never came to fruition. In 1995, Yugoslavia took gold at EuroBasket and Croatia placed third, winning bronze.

Today, the Yugoslavian region is sliced between smaller countries that have still managed to maintain a tangible level of success on the world basketball stage. Croatia and Serbia have both moved beyond the group stages in this summer’s Rio Olympics and will look to medal as individual countries, just as their aforementioned predecessors did.

“You can’t go back in time, you know? You can’t ‘what if’. World politics has intervened and it’s never going to be the same as it was when it was one country,” Fraschilla said bluntly. “These countries are the size of medium sized states, yet they produce an enormous amount of basketball talent. It’s sad, because if you take all of the great players from former Yugoslavia and put them together right now, they would have a team that would likely compete with Team USA.”

We will never get to see the true potential of that region because bigotry and hatred became commonplace during a time of distress.

As fate would have it, Croatia and Serbia have been matched up against each other in a single-elimination quarterfinals game during the Olympics on Wednesday night. Serbia, a team that’s reliant more on their older talent, will have to keep up with the developing Croatian national team.

Bojan Bogdanovic has been representing Croatia despite his Bosnian roots. The prolific scorer has been a veteran leader of sorts for Saric and Hezonja, who are being viewed as the future of the Croatian team.

On the opposite end, Teodosic, a former Euroleague MVP, is hoping to lead the Serbian team back to the Final, just as he did in 2014. The crafty point guard has taken Bogdan Bogdanovic, who missed a game-tying three point shot against the United States on Friday, under his wing.

Instead of playing together as one, the two teams will claw for every loose ball on Wednesday night as separate.

Teodosic won’t be able to throw his patented no-look pass to Croatia’s Bogdanovic, who’s become one of the leading scorers in Rio. And perhaps even more tragically, the battle tested players on each respective team won’t be able to pass along the basketball skill they have to their successors that are the same, but merely different because of the land that divides them.

On Wednesday night, both Serbia and Croatia will fight for the chance to advance towards an opportunity to play against the United States. If either team makes it they will face the challenge of being out-talented by Team USA and they will leave the question of, “what if?”