With faith in miracles
Frankly, this is a ghostly chance. But he still is. In order to get into the eight of the best basketball teams of the continent, the Belgrade team needs to make a miracle: beat home CSKA, which sweeps everyone in its path. But at the same time wait for the second miracle: the victory of the Spanish “Hoventud” in Piraeus over the “Olympiacos” (provided that the Catalans do not get carried away and do not win with a difference of more than 33 points).
Black and white can only blame themselves for deciding on the issue of entering the next stage. Points lost in the last seconds of the fourth round match in Greece could turn today's game against the army into a formality. But it turned out differently, and now Belgrade can only hope for the ardent support of the seven thousandth “Pionir” (see VIDEO), the inspiration of the leaders and the lack of motivation in the army camp. The latter - with the coaching maximalism of Ettore Messina - is hard to believe. But, as they say, hope dies last.
So sick in Belgrade - cutting from the match “Partizan” - “Cibona”
Happy Hoventud
So, Belgrade again hoping for “Hoventud”. Over the years, he became a kind of mascot of the Serbian club. It was the Catalans who beat black and white in the 1992 Champions Cup commemorative final, having won so far the only title of continental champion. It was the away victory over Hoventud in the previous round that opened the door for the quarterfinals of the current Euroleague to the Serbs. It was Fernandez and his comrades Belgrade in the Top 16 who defeated both at home and away. And in the hearts of Belgrade fans there is a hope that the team from the Pyrenees will help Partizan again.
Nevertheless, if Partizan is left out of the quarterfinal stage of the Euroleague - and it is this scenario that seems more likely, the stones are unlikely to fly to Dushan Vuyoshevich and his wards. Indeed, today, “Partizan” bit by bit restores the reputation of the once the strongest club in Europe. And the work is laborious and painstaking, with an eye to the long term.
In the shadow of the neighbors
The club’s path, founded in 1946 under the patronage of the Yugoslav People’s Army, from a novice in European basketball to a first-rate NBA star supplier, is truly amazing. Black and white (and not only them) spent the first decade in the shadow of their neighbors: from 1946 to 1955, the eternal rival, Crvena Zvezda, became the unchanged champion of Yugoslavia. The next 20 years passed under the signs of the Slovenian Olympia (6 titles), the Croatian Zadar (5) and the Belgrade OKC (4).
The first national title, which was harder to win than the Champions Cup, Partizan fans waited for the club's 30th anniversary. Over the course of three decades, Partizan five times became vice-champion and twice came to the finish line with the same number of points as the leaders, but lost the championship because of the worst difference between points scored and missed.
Take-off to the European Elite
Under the leadership of Ranko Zheravitsa, who masterfully learned the lessons of basketball from the genius of the coaching profession, Alexander Nikolic, in season 75/76 one of the best generations of players began to take off, which the Belgrade club gave to world basketball. The first international trophy, the Radivoe Korac Cup, was won by black and white in the spring of 1978, defeating the Sarajevo “Bosna”, which a year later became European champion.
Season 78/79 was one of the most successful in club history. Replacing Zheravice, Dusan Ivkovic won all three trophies already in his debut year. The team, led by an experienced mentor beyond 35 years!, Added another Korac Cup to the Yugoslav double, having beaten the Italian “Arigoni” in the final. Two superstars stood out in that team of genuine masters: attacking defender Dragan Kicanovich (see VIDEO) and forward Drazen Dalipagich - two-time European champions, winners of the World Cup 75-OI-76, who became world champions in Manila in 1978.
The final of the European Championship-75 Yugoslavia-USSR, the key attack completes Dragan Kichanovich.
Congratulating the Serbian master in January on the 300th game in European competition, reporters did not hesitate to ask if there was anything in his rich career that he regrets. Ivkovich immediately replied: "If I regret anything, it was only that in those two seasons when I trained Partizan, we failed to unite Kichanovich and Dalipagich, who were at the peak of their careers at that time."
Players in different years went to the army service, which, according to the coach, deprived the team of the opportunity to compete for the main trophy of club European basketball. “Maybe I didn’t have enough authority to insist that they don’t leave to serve when it was convenient ... As a coach, I’m sorry that I didn’t have the opportunity to work with them at the club at the same time,” complained the popular Duda.
A step from the stars
Attempting a basketball Olympus in the end fell to another generation of players. Kichanovich became the director of the club, and the young Dushko Vuyoshevich became the coach, under whose leadership Partizan won the Yugoslav championship in 1987. That composition was a scattering of diamonds: Aleksandar Djordjevic, Vlade Divac, Zharko Paspal - basketball experts immediately took their names to the pencil. And led by experienced point guard Zhelko Obradovic, black-and-white already in 1988 reached the Final Four in the Belgian Ghent, where they won third place.
As time will tell, the team that claimed the title of best on the continent, then lacked another extra-class player. And he appeared in the offseason in the person of 19-year-old attacking defender Predrag Danilovich. With him, black and white won the Korac Cup for the third time in the 88/89 season (the Italian “Viva Vizmar”, Cantu, was defeated in the final by the sum of two meetings). The victory of the Yugoslav Cup against the invincible “Yugoplastika” Tony Kukoch and Bozidar Malkovich seemed even more sensational. Meanwhile, when at the end of the season Paspal and Divac set off overseas, many thought that black and white had sung a swan song.
On the top
Zeljko Obradovic categorically did not agree with this, having replaced the parquet with the coaching bench. The ex-playmaker of the Yugoslav national team argued that a better pair of defenders than Djordjevic and Danilovich cannot be found in Europe, and that Partizan will fight for the European title in the 91/92 season.
The words of the beginning coach, many were puzzled, if not laughter. Climbing to the top seemed even more difficult after the FIBA decision to order the Belgrade people for safety reasons (in neighboring Croatia, the war was in full swing) to hold home European cup matches outside the country. Paradox: black and white went to Spain and played in the hosts in the Madrid suburb of Fuenlabrad. Yes, it’s so good that they played out to Istanbul's Final Four. But there the chances of the team, the average age of which was only 21.7 years, on paper looked less preferable than that of Milan “Philips” and Badalona “Hoventud”. However, the Serbs broke the bank, and the three-pointer, abandoned by Djordjevic at the last second of the final, immediately guaranteed the defender basketball immortality in his homeland (see VIDEO).
Accurate three-pointer Alexander Dzhordzhvich brings “Partizan” victory over “Hoventud” 71:70 and the title of best team in Europe in the season-91/92.
Instead of an afterword
The following season, that champion team was not allowed to defend the title due to UN sanctions against Belgrade. The stellar tandem of defenders went to Italy (Djordjevic to Philips, Danilovich to Knorr from Bologna), and in a country isolated by the international community, young basketball talents went abroad as one.
The tragedy of the collapse of the country also directly affected sports - the foundations of professional development, laid and strengthened for decades, began to shake. From the country that produced the championship teams, Yugoslavia (that is, Serbia and, especially, the rest of the republics of the once large country) has turned into an exporter of young players who joined the leading European clubs.
“Partizan” was no exception - the outflow of players to this day is the main problem. And returning home to play in both the NBA and Europe, Predrag Drobnyak is a good sign. Having only one legionnaire in their composition, black and white are true to the old principle of educating their own cadres. And examples of Tripkovich, Perovich and Bogdanovich are evidence of this. Belgrade is well aware that basketball has changed and to fully confront European giants, you need a budget with a different number of zeros. But Vuyoshevich does not leave optimism.
“You don’t have to get into euphoria because of this victory. But in any case, it is respected,” said the Belgrade coach after a triumph in Badalona. “I think that we finally found a real team that can be made great. It’s not individually strong players on the same team, and a well-functioning team. "
Let Vuyoshevich’s words ever come true. Belgrade and Serbian basketball certainly deserve it.
Boyan SHOCH