The club is based in the country, but trains players from all over the Balkans and Europe. A new organization in Serbia called Mega Basket-a youth-oriented club that prioritized developing players’ abilities in the long run over winning games-was set up in 1998. However, the desire to continue the Yugoslav style of basketball lived on. Now divided into six countries, each republic had a much smaller population to recruit talent from, and the era of Yugoslavian dominance in international competitions seemed to be waning. Yugoslavia was already a relatively small country with a population that hovered around 24 million. The breakup of Yugoslavia was a blow to basketball in the Balkans.
“We would wake up every morning and just hope that sports news would pick up what happened with the Lakers.” The aftermath “With all this horrible news of war and people dying, we would try and find a ray of sunshine by seeing what happened with Vlade Divac on the LA Lakers,” Jovanović says. So they would focus their attention on Yugoslavian players abroad, playing in leagues like the NBA. Still, many sports fans like Jovanović needed something to look forward to during those difficult years. “Not a declaration of supremacy but a sadness for an opportunity that was lost.” “Speak to anyone who grew up in Serbia during that time and you will hear that same sentiment,” says host Adam Mares in a documentary about Serbian basketball culture for DNVR called 100 Invisible Threads. This was particularly frustrating for many Yugoslavian basketball fans since the 1992 Olympics would have offered Yugoslavia the opportunity to compete against the United States’ “Dream Team” that included legendary players like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. The war also resulted in sanctions against Yugoslavia, which meant that its basketball team was suddenly cut off from all international competition. More than 140,000 people were killed and nearly four million were displaced. The fighting-which involved ethnic conflict, insurgencies, and wars of independence-began in 1991 and would continue on and off for an entire decade. We felt that it was our own personal David and Goliath story.” The breakup of Yugoslaviaīut just as Yugoslavia’s basketball team seemed to be on top of the world, war broke out in the country. “It felt good because in the scope of things we were still a small country but we could stick it to these much larger countries like Germany, Spain, and the Soviet Union.
“In ’88 we won the Olympic silver, in ’89 we won the Eurobasket, and in ’90 we won the World Cup so we were back to back European and world champions and Olympic silver medalists,” Jovanović says. Jovanović, who grew up watching the national team, says that the success was incredible to watch. Between 19, the men’s national team won five Olympic medals, six FIBA World Cup medals, and 13 FIBA EuroBasket medals. That style of training seemed to make Yugoslavian players highly competitive.
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Everyone learns how to dribble, how to pass, and how to shoot.” “They were not going to say you’re a point guard so you focus on point guard things, you’re a center so you focus on center things. They were not going to profile you based on your size,” Jovanović says. “That was a hallmark of the Yugoslav school of basketball. All young players trained using the same drills regardless of height or individual strengths. In Yugoslavia, however, things were different. Shorter players were encouraged to focus more on passing, dribbling, and taking jump shots further away from the basket. Taller players focused on staying close to the rim, dunking, and using their physicality to defend. In the United States, basketball players usually trained to specialize in specific positions. Jovanović believes that the socialist mindset helped cultivate a playing style that would ultimately become known as positionless basketball. “There was no better way to make people equal than by putting them into team sports.”
“Socialist countries such as Yugoslavia would empower team sports as a way of promoting community,” Jovanović says.
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