Mirza Teletović

Mirza Teletović
Player information
birthday	17th September 1985 (age 34)
place of birth	Mostar , SFR Yugoslavia
size	206 cm
Weight	109 kg
position	Power forward
NBA draft	undrafted ( 2007 )
Clubs as active
2002–2004 Sloboda Tuzla 2004–2006 Telindus Oostende 2006–2012 Saski Baskonia 2012–2015 Brooklyn Nets 2015–2016 Phoenix Suns 2016–2018 Milwaukee Bucks
National team
000000000	Bosnia and Herzegovina

Mirza Teletović (born September 17, 1985 in Mostar , SR Bosnia and Herzegovina , SFR Yugoslavia ) is a former Bosnian basketball player and current official.

At the age of 19 he moved from his home country to the Belgian league and after two years continued to one of the leading European clubs Saski Baskonia from Vitoria-Gasteiz. With the Basque club, he was twice Spanish champions in 2008 and 2010 and once Spanish cup winners in 2009, and in the top European division ULEB Euroleague they reached twice the Final Four tournament and between 2006 and 2011 always at least the quarter-finals.

Teletović moved to the NBA in 2012 and was mainly known as a good distance shooter during his time there.

Club career

Europe

In 2002, at the age of 17, Teletović moved up to the first team of KK Sloboda Dita from Tuzla , who had reached the final for the championship in Bosnia and Herzegovina every year between 1994 and 2002 and were also five times victorious in addition to six national cup wins . In 2004 he moved abroad and played in Belgium for the ten-time Belgian master BC Ostend. In his second season in 2006, he won another championship with the club, which was sponsored by Telindus , together with his compatriot Elvir Ovčina and the German national player Denis Wucherer . He then moved to the stronger Spanish ACB league .

The Spanish runner-up TAU Cerámica , the sponsor name of Saski Baskonia at the time, signed him for the 2006/07 season. In the ULEB Euroleague 2006/07 they marched with only two defeats in the preliminary round to the semi-finals, where they were defeated by the later title holder Panathinaikos Athens . In the ULEB Euroleague 2007/08 they lost in the semi-finals to last year's finalist and later title holder PBK ZSKA Moscow . For this they won the Spanish championship in 2008 against FC Barcelona , against which they had been eliminated in the semi-final series of the championship in the previous season. Teletović himself was named the Most Improved Player of the Spanish Championship this season.

In the 2008/09 season they lost as the defending champion and first place in the regular season the final series against FC Barcelona, ​​as well as the quarter-final series in the ULEB Euroleague 2008/09 , which Barcelona then won. The semi-finals in the Spanish Cup competition Copa del Rey were won by the Catalan club, after winning the title in this competition Teletović was appointed MVP of the cup tournament.

In the Euroleague he had in 21 games with an average of 13 points per game 121 attempts to throw from behind the three-point line with a good success rate of 42.1%, in the throws from the near and middle distance he had 66 attempts, the but he finished with an outstanding success rate of 74.2%, which was the best value of the Euroleague season at the time and underlined his good selection of litters. The success rate from the near and middle distance was almost the same as his free throw rate .

In the 2009/10 season they competed under the new sponsor name Caja Laboral and were eliminated in the ULEB Euroleague 2009/10 as in the previous season in the quarter-finals, this time against CSKA Moscow, after they only narrowly played against the other Russian in the second round Representative BK Chimki could claim against whom they were tied in a direct comparison . Teletović shone in the last three intermediate round games with the team's best value of 25 points. In the Spanish championship he was elected MVP of the day for the first time on the sixth match day.

At the end of the main round, they finished second behind FC Barcelona, ​​which again won the Euroleague. In the final series of the championship, the two opponents met for the third time in a row and Caja Laboral just kept the victorious end to himself in three games, two wins with only one point difference.

In the 2010/11 season they met in the semi-final series of the championship, which this time the later title holder FC Barcelona could clearly win in three games with at least ten points difference per game. In the ULEB Euroleague 2010/11 they were eliminated again in the quarter-finals against the eventual finalist Maccabi Tel Aviv .

NBA

For the 2012/13 season Teletović moved to the NBA for the Brooklyn Nets . In his first season he was used in 53 games. Here he was able to achieve an average of 3.5 points and 1.8 rebounds. In the course of the 2013/14 season he was able to increase his points average to 9.1 points with an average of 19 minutes. On January 24, 2014, he scored his career high of 34 points in the home game against the Dallas Mavericks . He hit seven out of eleven attempted three-point throws.

Teletović as a player in the Brooklyn Nets (2013)

In January 2015, the short of breath Teletović was diagnosed with bilateral pulmonary embolism . The life-threatening illness was successfully treated and Teletović returned to the field after just three months before the end of the season. The Nets initially made Teletović an official offer to extend the contract, which they withdrew after three weeks at the beginning of the transfer window.

A week later Teletović signed a one-year contract with the Phoenix Suns for the NBA 2015/16 . Teletovic set Chuck Person's NBA record for the 1994–95 season on April 5, 2016 , when he hit more than 164 three-point throws during the season as a bench player.

On July 8, 2016, he signed a contract with the Milwaukee Bucks after his one-year contract expired and neither he nor the Suns drew the contracted option.

In the 2017/18 game year, he missed 16 matches in a row due to a knee injury and had to undergo surgery, and a pulmonary embolism was diagnosed in December 2017. At the end of September 2018 he announced the end of his competitive sports career for health reasons and became chairman of the Bosnian basketball association. Teletović played a total of 343 games in the NBA.

National team

Teletović was provided for the first time at the European Championship finals in 2003 as a not yet 18-year-old player for the final squad of the Bosnian selection of men, but not used in the three defeats in the preliminary round. At the following European Championship finals in 2005 in neighboring Serbia and Montenegro, it was again over early after three defeats in the preliminary round.

It was not until 2011 that qualification for the 2011 European Championship finals was achieved again by increasing the field of final round participants to 24 teams . Against neighboring Montenegro , the national team achieved their first ever victory in a European Championship finals in the second group match, and the following disastrous 64:92 defeat against Finland meant they were eliminated in the preliminary round, as the further victory against Croatia with a best performance of 26 points by Teletović in a three-way comparison was not high enough for advancement.

At the EM 2013 Teletović contributed a points average of 21.0 per game. Nevertheless, the national team was just eliminated in the preliminary round.

Web links

• Mirza Teletović - player profile on basketball-reference.com
• TELETOVIC, MIRZA - Player profile on the sides of the ULEB (English)
• Mirza Teletović - Overview of participation in international FIBA tournaments on archive.fiba.com (English)
• ACB: M. Teletovic - player profile on the pages of the league ACB (Spanish)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mirza Teletovic Medical Update - 01/23/15. National Basketball Association , January 23, 2015, accessed August 8, 2015 (Media Info Brooklyn Nets). 
2. ^ Suns Sign Teletovic, Weems, Price. National Basketball Association , July 17, 2015, accessed August 8, 2015 (Phoenix Suns media info). 
3. ↑ Mirza Teletovic sets NBA record for most 3-pointers in a season by a reserve
4. ↑ http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/21770837/mirza-teletovic-milwaukee-bucks-indefinitely-lung-issue
5. ↑ https://www.nba.com/bucks/release/statement-gm-jon-horst-mirza-teletovic
6. ↑ https://stats.nba.com/player/203141/career/
7. ↑ Teletovic praised. FIBAEurope.com, August 29, 2003, accessed October 4, 2011 .