The Last Dance: Why Toni Kukoc was ahead of his time

There’s no question the biggest snub from the first four episodes of ESPN’s The Last Dance has been Toni Kukoc, a man before his time.

Four episodes into The Last Dance, Toni Kukoc, Chicago’s primary sixth man during the Bulls second three-peat of the 1990s, has only appeared a handful times — mostly in random game footage and once sitting on the team plane reading the paper — while his name has never really been mentioned.

With episode five set to focus on the 1992 Dream Team, one that famously ran into Kukoc’s Croatia team in the Olympic, the hope is that finally, Kukoc can get some love.

And really, Kukoc deserves a lot of love.

Kukoc came to the Chicago Bulls with a scarlet letter as one of general manager Jerry Krause’s handpicked proteges. Immediately targeted by both Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan in the 1992 Olympics, Kukoc had to prove his worth to his team’s biggest stars. More than that, Kukoc had to prove he belonged in the NBA.

Today’s NBA is a far different world than the one that Croatian-born Kukoc entered in 1993. It’s commonplace to see a top-tier European product enter the league and contribute immediately. Luka Doncic has already placed himself in the upper echelon of the league, in just two years. Giannis Antetokounmpo is coming off an MVP season (and probably deserves back-to-back awards). Nikola Jokić is one of the league’s best big men. Before them, European players like Pau Gasol and Dirk Nowitzki fought through questions about toughness, skillset and durability to become Hall of Fame players.

When Kukoc entered the NBA in 1993, he was already a well-accomplished professional basketball player, one of FIBA’s 50 Greatest Players, five-time Euroscar Player of the Year, four-time Yugoslav League champion, three-time Croatian Sportsman of the Year, three-time EuroLeague champion, Italian League champion … the list goes on and on.

But the NBA he was entering wasn’t as kind to European players. When Kukoc finally joined the Bulls in 1993 (drafted originally in 1990), he was entering a league that had only three European-born players contribute 10+ Win Share seasons (Detlef Schrempf, Kiki VanDeWeghe and James Donaldson). Among those three, two grew up primarily in the United States as VanDeWeghe was born in Germany when his father (Ernie VanDeWeghe, a former NBA player in his own right) was stationed in the United States Air Force. Donaldson was born in the United Kingdom but grew up in California.

So, really, the only high-contributing (10+ Win Share) European-born player prior to Kukoc was Detlef Schrempf.

This isn’t meant to take away the accomplishments of other high-end European-born players. Prior to Schrempf and Kukoc, players like Swen Nater, Drazen Petrovic, Vlade Divac, Rik Smits, and Sarunas Marciulionis carved the path all others followed.

Kukoc wasn’t being brought into the Chicago Bulls to simply be a piece of the puzzle, he was being brought on board to mitigate the void left by the retiring Jordan.

When news of the signing came out both Krause and Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson didn’t have questions or concerns about their Croatian import. Quite the opposite. Krause said, “it’s been a long time coming, it’s going to make our basketball team better.” Jackson was optimistic as well, “I think we can run more with Toni, look to generate more offense, feature an up-tempo game a little more.”

In fact, nobody was questioning his NBA readiness more than Kukoc:

"“Three months before the season is not enough to become a good NBA player, but it’s a start. The game here is harder, more physical, faster”"

What made Kukoc such an enigma was not only becoming a high-level contributing European-born player when few others had done it, but the style of Kukoc’s game.

The European-born players mentioned above were all very different players than Kukoc. Nater, Divas and Smits were big bodies parked down low. Petrovic and Marciulionis were skilled, hard-nosed combo guards. Kukoc was entering the NBA at 6-foot-10, a height normally reserved for bruising power forwards and centers. But Kukoc was not that. He was a shooter. A skilled passer. A point forward. Lamar Odom before Lamar Odom was cool. In today’s NBA, scouts would be frothing at the mouth for a 6-foot-10 player with the type of ballhandling and shooting skills Kukoc possessed.

In 1993? Eh. Not so much.

The questions about European-born players never stopped. Each time a team dared draft a European player there were the same questions. Kukoc even recalled in a recent interview that he and many of his teammates knew they could hang in the NBA but the questions still remained:

"We always competed with Larry Johnson and Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning. And we were kicking their butts every time. Junior worlds, Goodwill games, World Championships, Olympics. We knew if these guys are coming into the NBA and they are No. 1, 2, 3 (draft) picks and they are All-Stars, we wondered how is that when we play international we beat these guys. Then we go to the NBA and they question, ‘Are we strong enough?’ ‘Are we good enough?’ ‘Can we play the NBA game? And all that."

In Kukoc’s rookie year — one in which he started only eight games — saw the Croatian attempt 118 3-pointers. That’s like a week of James Harden in 2020 but then, it was still a novelty. Prior to Kukoc, only 19 players 6-foot-10 or above had shot 100 3s in a single season. Of those, only Bill Laimbeer and Jack Sikma managed to generate over 8 Win Shares in a season.

It didn’t take Kukoc long to adapt to the NBA game. While his body may not have looked like it was NBA-ready, his skills absolutely were. Kukoc came out of the gates with 10 points in his NBA debut. Just six games into the season, he had his first 20-point game. The Bulls were the talk of the NBA as they hadn’t regressed without Jordan, in fact, they were every bit as good as they had been the prior year with Jordan.

Pippen had taken a leap into superstardom and their European import Kukoc was helping soften the massive blow of Jordan’s retirement. Chicago pushed into the playoffs finishing the season with 55 wins and after quickly dispatching the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference First Round. Now, they had a date with the hated New York Knicks for a chance to make it to their sixth-straight Eastern Conference Finals.

In Game 6, tied 102-102, Jackson drew up what he felt was a game-winning play. The ball would be in his rookie’s hands. Much to the chagrin of team leader and veteran Pippen (who sat the play out in protest), Kukoc received the inbounds pass, faded away and sank the game-winner.

Chicago would ultimately lose in seven games but Kukoc had officially arrived.

In his sophomore season, he shot more 3s (just a hair under 200). He joined an even smaller list of players at his height to shoot that many 3s — only seven (Sikma, Clifford Robinson, Terry Mills, Brad Lohaus, Danny Ferry and Matt Bullard).

There was one key difference between Kukoc and those players though.

While the non-Kukoc players on this list averaged 5 Win Shares in the seasons where they shot as many threes as Kukoc, “The Croatian Sensation” had become not only a prolific shooter but one of the Bulls’ best players. Kukoc’s sophomore season was the first of two consecutive 10+ Win Share seasons. Kukoc averaged 15.7 points per game, 5.4 rebounds per game and shot 31.3 percent from 3. The Bulls, now re-equipped with Jordan, made it all the way to the NBA’s Eastern Conference Semifinals again before falling to Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway and the Orlando Magic.

Kukoc followed his sophomore campaign with another great season, albeit a drop in scoring average (13.1). But, when you win a then-NBA record 72 games, your first NBA championship and Sixth Man of the Year, you can let a few points go by the wayside.

A key cog in the Bulls second three-peat, Kukoc possessed skills that had really never seen before as he averaged 13.2 points per game, 4.3 rebounds per game and 4.0 assists per game despite taking only 10.5 shots per game. Only four 6-foot-10+ players in history have averaged a stat line like that in a single season (Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Toni Kukoc and Brad Miller).

When the Chicago Bulls dynasty was broken up following their defeat of the Utah Jazz in the 1998 NBA Finals, Kukoc stuck around. It was in 1999, on an absolutely pathetic Bulls team, that perhaps Kukoc showed best what he was capable of. On a team desperate for scoring and leadership, Kukoc brought stability. Starting 44 games in the lockout-shortened season, Kukoc averaged a career-high 18.8 points per game, nabbed a career-best 7.0 rebounds per game and dished a, you guessed it, career-high 5.3 assists per game. You see a season like this and wonder what Kukoc could have done with his own team. Would he still have been underappreciated if he wasn’t the fourth-best player? Who knows.

Obviously, Kukoc’s career tapered off in 2000 as he was traded from the Bulls to Philadelphia and then bounced around the NBA with stops in Atlanta and finally Milwaukee while battling injuries.

As he drifted away from the NBA, the next wave of European-born stars made their way in and, in large part thanks to Kukoc, were given the chance to showcase their skills almost immediately. Many of the next wave of European-born players were highly-skilled 6-foot-10+ players who could score from all over the court. Nowitzki wasn’t forced to simply be a back to the basket bruiser like Nater. Stojakovic was allowed to roam around the 3-point line and help the Kings nearly make to the NBA Finals. Gasol was able to be a do-everything big man for the Memphis Grizzlies. Even the Turkish-born Mehmet Okur offered the Utah Jazz a unique skill set as a bulky 6-foot-11 center who could also hit 3s.

We don’t know yet how The Last Dance will handle Kukoc’s legacy or important but I hope they give him the credit he deserves. The skillset Kukoc brought to the table helped pave the way for the Nowitzkis, Stojakovics and others. Kukoc’s ability to buck the trend and show just how important his skills were to winning basketball helped usher in a new era of NBA basketball.