Jiří Okáč

Jiří Okáč
Player information
birthday	3rd November 1963
place of birth	Brno, Czechoslovakia
size	217 cm
position	center
Clubs as active
1983-1984 Spartak Brno 1984-1986 Dukla Olomouc 1986-1990 Spartak Brno 1990-1991 BAC Damme 1991 Videoton SC Székesfehérvár 1991-1992 Cáceres CB 1992-1993 CB Zaragoza 1993-1994 Espada Tizona Burgos Vekaventanas 1994-1996 SV Tally Oberelchingen 1996-1999 BK Opava 1999–2001 Mlékárna Kunín Nový Jičín 2001–2002 BK Brno 2002–2003 Plasencia Ambroz 2003 BK Brno 2004 Cáceres CB 2004–2005 BK Prostějov 2005–2006 BK Olomouc 2006–2007 Ford Burgos 2007 BBK Brno 00000 00000 00000 00000
National team
1983-1992 1993-2003	Czechoslovakia Czech Republic
Clubs as coaches
2010–2013 UKJ Mistelbach

Jiří Okáč medal table
Basketball (men)
Czechoslovakia
European Championship
silver	1985 Federal Republic of Germany

Jiří Okáč (born November 3, 1963 in Brno , Moravia ) is a former Czech basketball player . The Czechoslovak national player initially played in his home country and became vice European champion with the national team at the 1985 European basketball championship. After the opening of the Iron Curtain , Okáč also played in Western Europe , including two seasons for SV Oberelchingen in the German basketball league and a few years in Spain. Okáč was active until 2007 and also returned to the arena at the age of forty for professional athletes for Spanish clubs and from his home town of Brno. Most recently, Okáč worked as a trainer for UKJ Mistelbach in the Austrian 2nd basketball league for three years .

Career

Okáč, who was 2.17 m tall even for a basketball player, soon joined the squad of the top Czechoslovakian team Spartak ZJŠ from his hometown, which won 19 championships in Czechoslovakia by 1990. After he had already made his debut in a final squad in the national team at the 1983 European Championship , he was also represented in the Czechoslovak squad during his two years with Moravian rival Dukla from Olomouc at the 1985 European Championship finals . After a rather mediocre preliminary round, in which the hosts Germany with Detlef Schrempf , among others , were defeated, they surprisingly beat ex-world champion Yugoslavia in the quarter-finals, led by Dražen Petrović , who had been world leaders until the early 1980s, but was in a phase of upheaval before a younger generation led the Yugoslav team to new successes. After beating Spain in the semi- finals, there was no surprise in the final when they lost 98 to 120 to the most successful European national team, the Soviet Union . Okáč, who was not yet 22 at the time, had his best point haul in the final game when he scored twelve points, his only double-digit point haul in a game at this final round. A year later, Okáč returned to Spartak Brno, with whom he won their last three championships up to 1989. With the Czechoslovak national team he could not build on the success of 1985, the best placement was achieved in the last tournament of a joint Czechoslovak team at the European Championship finals in 1991 with sixth place. Okáč had already played in the pre-season in Damme, Belgium and Székesfehérvár , Hungary, after the Iron Curtain was opened .

For the 1991/92 season Okáč received a contract in the second Spanish league LEB with the club from Cáceres in Extremadura . With this club he made it to the top division ACB league . In the following season he played for the club from Zaragoza in the ACB League, which at the end of the season as the main round tenth in the play-offs reached the quarter-finals, in which one was defeated by the defending champion Joventut de Badalona . The 1993/94 season he then played for the second division Tizona Vekaventanas from Burgos . For the basketball Bundesliga 1994/95 Okáč moved to the top German division to the promoted from Oberelchingen . He did astonishingly well and reached the championship play-offs straight away, with a balanced point account, in which the series champions Bayer 04 Leverkusen were defeated in the first round . In the following 1995/96 season it was again just enough to move into the championship finals, in which they again remained without a win in the first round against defending champion Leverkusen. Okáč returned to his Czech homeland at the age of 33 and played for the club from Opava , with whom he won two other national championships in the following three years, including twice as a double . After winning the cup again in 1999, however, the title defense of the championship failed and Okáč moved to the new champions from Nový Jičín . Although he won the Czech cup competition for the fourth time in a row with his new team Mlékárna Kunín for him personally, but the defense of the championship failed to materialize. Okáč then played another season with his home club from his hometown Brno.

In 2002, Okáč went back to Spain at the age of 39 and played for the club from Plasencia in the third Spanish division LEB 2. Plasencia Ambroz lost in the promotion play-offs in the semi-final series, but managed by expanding the second division you still have the climb. After he had played in his home town of Brno in the 2003/04 season, he got another contract in the second Spanish division in January 2004 with his former club from Cáceres, the regional rival of Plasencia in Extremadura. However, the club just missed the play-offs for promotion in ninth place in the main round. After physical problems, the then 41-year-old Okáč renounced another contract with the team that he had previously supported in the coaching staff. In the following two years Okáč was still active in his Moravian homeland for teams in the top division. With the promoted from Prostějov he was runner-up right away. For the 2006/07 season, the then 43-year-old Okáč got a contract in the second Spanish league again from the successor club CB Atapuerca of his former club from Burgos, which he ended prematurely in January 2007 and announced his definitive retirement from competitive sports. Nevertheless, he was still registered as a temporary member of his hometown club from Brno, which, however, filed for bankruptcy in 2008. For the 2010/11 season Okáč then took over his first job as the responsible coach of a men's team and was coach of the Austrian second division UKJ from Mistelbach near the border with his Moravian homeland. After three years, however, he gave up this position and returned to Brno.

Web links

• archive.fiba.com: Players - Jirí Okác (CZE) - Overview of participation in FIBA tournaments ( English )
• Federación Española de Baloncesto: Okac, Jiri - player profile on the pages of the Spanish association FEB.es ( Spanish )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jirí Okác's Profile / 1985 European Championship for Men. FIBA , accessed on September 7, 2013 (English, final round statistics ). 
2. ↑ Problemas físicos impedirán a Jiri Okac jugar la próxima campaña en Cáceres. Liga ACB , July 29, 2004, accessed September 7, 2013 (Spanish, media info). 
3. ^ J. Carlos Ramos: Jiri Okac dijo adiós al baloncesto en Burgos. Hoy.es, January 25, 2007, accessed September 7, 2013 (Spanish). 
4. ↑ Martin Weissenböck: Czech record international Jiri Okac is the new trainer of UKJ Mistelbach. (No longer available online.) UKJ Mistelbach , June 13, 2010, archived from the original on March 9, 2014 ; accessed on September 7, 2013 (media information). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Martin Weissenböck takes over the head coaching position in Mistelbach. OeBL.at , July 25, 2013, accessed on September 7, 2013 (Medien-Info).