Vlade Divac

Vlade Divac
Player information
birthday	3rd February 1968 (age 52)
place of birth	Prijepolje , SFR Yugoslavia
size	216 cm
Weight	116 kg
position	center
NBA draft	1989 , 26th Pick, Los Angeles Lakers
Clubs as active
1980–1982 KK Elan Prijepolje 1982–1986 KK Sloga Kraljevo 1986–1989 KK Partizan Belgrade 1989–1996 Los Angeles Lakers 1996–1998 Charlotte Hornets 1998–1999 KK Red Star Belgrade 1999–2004 Sacramento Kings 2004–2005 Los Angeles Lakers
National team
	SFR Yugoslavia FR Yugoslavia

Vlade Divac medal table
Basketball (men)
Yugoslavia
Olympic games
silver	1988 Seoul
World championships
bronze	1986 Spain
gold	1990 Argentina
European Championship
bronze	1987 Athens
gold	1989 Zagreb
gold	1991 Rome

Vlade Divac medal table
Basketball (men)
Yugoslavia
Olympic games
silver	1996 Atlanta
World championships
gold	2002 Indianapolis
European Championship
gold	1995 Athens
bronze	1999 France

Vlade Divac ( Serbian - Cyrillic Владе Дивац ; born February 3, 1968 in Prijepolje , SFR Yugoslavia ) is a former Serbian basketball player, sports official and current general manager of the Sacramento Kings in the NBA . Since 2009 he has also been President of the NOK Serbia .

As a national player of Yugoslavia, Divac won the 1990 World Cup and two European championships . He was later able to repeat these successes with the national teams of Serbia and Montenegro at the 2002 World Cup and the 1995 European Championship . He was also one of the first players from the former Yugoslavia to play in the most highly endowed professional league NBA in the United States in the 1990s .

Divac was considered an excellent passer, pronounced blocker and rebounder. During his time with the Sacramento Kings , he was once an NBA All-Star . In 2010 Divac was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame - and in 2019 as a player into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame .

Player career

Start time

Divac was in 1985 with the Yugoslav youth team at the side of Toni Kukoč cadet European champion. At the Junior European Championship in 1986 he also won gold, in addition to Kukoč, Dino Rađa , Aleksandar Đorđević and Teoman Alibegović were other well-known players on the team. At the age of 18 he moved from KK Sloga in Kraljevo to KK Partizan Belgrade , which was one of the leading teams in the Serbian part of Yugoslavia. Divac renounced training at a US college, as Luka Pavićević had previously tried. At Partizan he became a teammate of players like Željko Obradović , Aleksandar Đorđević and Žarko Paspalj . In the summer of 1986 he was the youngest player in the Yugoslav men's selection to take part in the 1986 World Cup finals in Spain. After two rather disappointing European Championship finals in 1983 and 1985, the Yugoslavian selection returned to the circle of the best and after a semi-final defeat after extra time against defending champion Soviet Union, as at the 1984 Olympics and four years earlier, won a bronze medal again.

In Divac 'first year with Partizan, the team in 1987, which was coached by Duško Vujošević from the middle of the 1986/87 season , won the Yugoslav national championship in the YUBA league for the fourth time since 1976. After a final defeat against hosts Greece , Divac won a silver medal at the European Championship finals in 1987 with Toni Kukoč and Dino Rađa of the same age in the Yugoslav men's selection . Two months later, a Yugoslav junior team coached by Svetislav Pešić and led by Divac, Kukoč and Rađa won the U20 World Championships in Bormio, Italy . An American selection around the later NBA professionals Gary Payton , Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon was defeated twice. In the final, Divac was the best scorer with 21 points. After the lost Olympic final in 1972 , when an American college selection lost to internationally experienced players from the Soviet Union, these two defeats are considered the first of a US top selection in a duel on an equal footing with a top selection from another country.

Divac and Dražen Petrović at the 1990 World Cup in Argentina

At the Olympic Games in 1988 , the Yugoslav men's selection won in the preliminary round against the Soviet Union, which was then relatively clearly inferior in the final with a difference of 13 points. This should remain the only defeat for the Yugoslav national team at a final tournament for the following three years except for the defeat at the 1990 World Cup in a meaningless group game against Puerto Rico . In the successive, superior title wins at the 1989 European Championship in front of a home crowd in Zagreb, 1990 World Cup and 1991 European Championship , the smallest victory difference in the winning games was eight points in the 1990 World Cup semi-finals against the US national team, which consisted of college players.

At the same time, Divac also became an instrument in the growing ethnic conflict within Yugoslavia when, after winning the World Cup in Argentina, he snatched the flag of the Croatian republic from a fan . Divac later stated that he wanted to protect his team by not tolerating any flags other than the Yugoslav flag, because it was also a Yugoslav victory. The action was perceived by Croats as dishonorable and politically justified as a symbol of Yugoslav politics dominated by Serbia. A year later, the aspirations for autonomy within Yugoslavia escalated into armed conflicts, so that Jurij Zdovc was prohibited from further participation during the European Championship finals in 1991 by the Slovenian government. In the following Yugoslavian wars , the politically used action by Divac in 1990 led to a growing estrangement from his former non-Serbian teammates.

NBA

Already in the NBA draft in 1989 Divac was selected in the first round in 26th place by the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA and immediately moved to the US professional league. In his debut season he scored 8.5 points and 6.2 rebounds in the team around Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 19.6 minutes per game and was elected to the NBA All-Rookie First Team . He was initially more successful within the league than his compatriot Dražen Petrović , who came from Croatia , who had already selected a much more difficult start at the Portland Trail Blazers as a newcomer that season. While Petrović later increased significantly with the New Jersey Nets , the relationship between the previously close roommates Divac and Petrović in the national team became estranged after the flare-up of the armed conflicts in the Yugoslav wars. Divac, on the other hand, grew up to the stronger center players in the NBA with a height of 2.16 meters and was soon a member of the Lakers' Starting Five .

In his second NBA season 1990/91 he reached with the Lakers as the leader of the Western Conference, the NBA final series against the Chicago Bulls , in which he marked an average of 12.9 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game . However, the Bulls won the NBA championship for the first time with Michael Jordan .

Divac played for seven years with the Los Angeles Lakers until he was transferred to the Charlotte Hornets in 1996 for Kobe Bryant . After only two years, Divac signed a contract with the Sacramento Kings for the 1998/1999 season . There he played for six years, until 2004. After a nomination for the NBA All-Star Game 2001, Divac reached the best with the Kings, in which he played with Chris Webber and fellow countryman Peja Stojaković , in the 2001/02 NBA Season record of all teams and failed in the final of the Western Conference just barely in seven games against his former Lakers team around Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal .

In July 2004, he signed a two-year contract as a free agent with the Lakers, where his NBA career began in 1989. However, a herniated disc ended his career shortly afterwards. He completed only 15 short appearances because of his permanent injury in the 2004/05 NBA season .

On July 14, 2005, he ended his active career. Vlade Divac is one of the few players, along with Hakeem Olajuwon and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , to have scored over 13,000 points, 9,000 rebounds, 3,000 assists and 1,500 blocks in NBA history. Besides Dirk Nowitzki, he is the first of only two NBA players to date to have completed at least 1,000 NBA league games, even though they were neither born in the USA nor trained as basketball players there.

On March 31, 2009, Divac's jersey number was locked in a ceremony in Sacramento; it will no longer be given to other players in the future. On August 20, 2010, he was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame .

Managerial career

Divac as manager of the Kings (2016)

In August 2015, Divac was named the new General Manager of the Sacramento Kings .

Others

Divac is a relative of the Serbian soccer player Milan Biševac .

In 2000 Divac received the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award for its social commitment . In 2008 he was honored as one of the 50 most important players in the history of the Europa League .

Divac not only made a career in the NBA, but also starred as an actor in a variety of series and films, including Space Jam , Eddie, and A Terribly Nice Family .

On May 24, 2008 he opened the remote voting for the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade with the moderators Željko Joksimović and Jovana Janković .

Filmography (selection)

Actor (supporting roles)

• 1993: A terribly nice family (episode: The Fan )
• 1996: Space Jam
• 1996: Eddie
• 2002: Juwanna Mann
• 2010: Once Brothers

Web links

Commons : Vlade Divac  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Vlace Divac - player profile on basketball-reference.com (English)
• Vlade Divac in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Predsednik | Olimpijski komitet Srbije: Vlade Divac - Profile on the website of the NOK Serbia ( Serbian )
• archive.fiba.com: Players - Vlade DIVAC (SRB) - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments ( English )

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Vlade Divac. Retrieved April 26, 2020 (English). 
2. ↑ archive.fiba.com: 1985 European Championship for Cadets. Retrieved July 11, 2020 . 
3. ↑ archive.fiba.com: 1986 European Championship for Junior Men. Retrieved July 11, 2020 . 
4. ^ ^{A b} Zarko Paspalj, the man who changed the Greek League. Retrieved July 11, 2020 . 
5. ^ Yugoslavia / 1987 World Championship for Junior Men. FIBA , accessed on June 9, 2014 (English, squad and schedule). 
6. ↑ archive.fiba.com: 1987 World Championship for Junior Men. Retrieved July 11, 2020 . 
7. ^ ^{A b} ESPN : Once Brothers - The Flag Incident - 1990 World Basketball Championships - Croatia vs Yugoslavia. YouTube , October 11, 2010, archived from the original on April 16, 2013 ; accessed on June 9, 2014 (English, excerpt from the documentary “Once Brothers”). 
8. ↑ Alexander Wolff: United, They Stood. Sports Illustrated , July 8, 1991, accessed June 9, 2014 . 
9. ↑ Sam Smith: Kukoc Doesn't Relish Reunion With Divac. Chicago Tribune , November 16, 1993, accessed June 9, 2014 (repro in the news archive). 
10. ↑ 1989 NBA Draft. Retrieved July 11, 2020 . 
11. ↑ Kings Announce Basketball Operations Update