Predrag Drobnjak

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Basketball player
Predrag Drobnjak
Player information
Nickname Peja
birthday October 27, 1975
place of birth Bijelo Polje, SFR Yugoslavia
size 211 cm
position center
NBA draft 1997 , 49. Pick Washington Wizards
Clubs as active
1992–1998 KK Partizan Belgrade 1998–2001 Efes Pilsen Istanbul 2001–2003 Seattle SuperSonics 2003–2004 Los Angeles Clippers 2004–2005 Atlanta Hawks 2005–2006 TAU Cerámica 2006–2007 KK Partizan Belgrade 2007 Akasvayu Girona 2007–2008 Beşiktaş Cola Turka 2008– 2009 Efes Pilsen Istanbul 2009–2010 PAOK Thessaloniki 2011 Iraklis ThessalonikiYugoslavia Federal Republic 1992Yugoslavia
TurkeyTurkey
United StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
United StatesUnited States
SpainSpain
SerbiaSerbia
000 0 SpainSpain
TurkeyTurkey
TurkeyTurkey
GreeceGreece
000 0GreeceGreece
National team
1998–2002
2003–2004
2006–2010 		Federal Republic of Yugoslavia /
Serbia and Montenegro
Montenegro
Predrag Drobnjak medal table

Basketball (men)

Yugoslavia Federal Republic 1992Yugoslavia Yugoslavia
World championships
gold 1998 Athens
gold 2002 Indianapolis
European championships
gold 2001 Turkey

Predrag Drobnjak (born October 27, 1975 in Bijelo Polje , SFR Yugoslavia ) is a former Montenegrin basketball player . With the Yugoslav national basketball team Drobnjak was twice world champion in 1998 and 2002 and once European champion in 2001 . Between 2001 and 2005 he played in the highest endowed professional league NBA in the USA . After returning to Europe, he played for various clubs in Spain , Serbia , Turkey and Greece .

After KK Partizan's Euroleague triumph in 1992, the 17-year-old Drobnjak moved up to the first team of the Belgrade club. Here the young player could slowly play his way to the fore. At the U22 European Championship in 1996, the Yugoslav junior selection only won the bronze medal, but Drobnjak was named MVP of the tournament. Drobnjak was nominated twice for the all-star game FIBA EuroStars of the best players in the Euroleague, the first time in 1996 he was just 21 years old. Consequently, in the 1997 NBA Draft, an NBA club secured the rights to the young talent; as the 49th player overall, he was selected by the Washington Wizards.

Initially, however, he continued to play in Europe and after the 1998 World Cup , in which Drobnjak received little playing time as a supplementary player in the Yugoslav team, moved to Turkey to the Istanbul sports club named after its sponsor Efes Pilsen . During Drobnjak's three-year season for Efes , however, the most successful Turkish club of the 1990s only won the runner-up championship three times and the 2001 Turkish Cup competition once. In the one-off Suproleague , the follow-up competition to the national championship , they achieved third place in 2001, which they had in the previous season in had reached the competition called FIBA Euroleague . At the 2000 Olympic Games , the Yugoslav national team lost in the quarterfinals and missed a medal. Drobnjak also had difficulties with the competition of older and more experienced colleagues like Željko Rebrača , Dejan Tomašević and Dragan Tarlać , even if he was better involved in the rotation than at the World Cup two years earlier. At the EM 2001 he was an integral part of the team that won the gold medal in the final against host Turkey .

Then Drobnjak moved to the US professional league NBA in 2001 after the Seattle SuperSonics had acquired the rights to Drobnjak in a player swap. Coming from the bench in his first season, he had his strongest NBA season in his second season in 2002/03 , when he was able to score almost 10 points per game in just under 25 minutes per game as a starting five player. At the 2002 World Cup in the USA, the Yugoslavs were able to repeat their triumph from four years ago, when they were able to hold down the strong Argentinians in the extension of the final. Drobnjak had to experience how his colleagues Vlade Divac , Dejan Koturović and Dejan Tomašević were usually preferred to working time. At the 2003 European Championship , the defending champion and world champion only made it to the quarter-finals via an elimination game , where they were clearly inferior to the later title holder Lithuania . In a team that had been renewed in many parts of the team, Drobnjak was a pillar with almost 35 minutes playing time per game up to the quarter-finals.

The Sonics, constantly represented in the play-offs from 1990 to 1998 , had missed this in 2003 for the third time since 1998. When the team was reorganized, Drobnjak came in September 2003 in a player swap to competitor Los Angeles Clippers, an NBA franchise with probably the lowest rate of play-off participation. Drobnjak had a difficult time with the Clippers, as he came back from the bench as a substitute and his game shares dropped to just under 15 minutes. Smoothed out to an assumed playing time of 36 minutes, his performance in all of his NBA seasons was surprisingly constant. The 2004 Olympic Games were again disappointing for world champions Yugoslavia, who now officially took on the role of Serbia and Montenegro. In the opening game, the eventual gold medalist Argentina won the final two years earlier for the lost World Cup final and the Serbian-Montenegrin team was eliminated after the preliminary round after just one win against Italy . In the meantime, Drobnjak was swapped for the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA via the new Charlotte Bobcats franchise team . With the Hawks he was also a substitute in the 2004/05 season , but as the sixth man he got almost as much playing time as with the Sonics in his second season as a starter. The Hawks, who had missed the play-offs only four times between 1978 and 1999, had reached their lowest point in that season and played the weakest season in their history with only 13 wins in 82 games this season. Then the NBA chapter was over for Drobnjak.

In 2005 Drobnjak moved to the Spanish ACB league for the Basque club TAU Cerámica in Vitoria-Gasteiz . After a good start to the season, where he was named MVP of the third match day, his shares in the game decreased in competition with the South American Tiago Splitter and Luis Scola in the front court of Tau Vitoria. The team reached the Spanish championship final as second in regular time, which was lost to Unicaja Málaga . In the Spanish cup competition Copa del Rey you won the title in the final against Pamesa Valencia . In the top European division ULEB Euroleague 2005/06 they became the best Spanish team after winning the game for third place against Winterthur FC Barcelona . Drobnjak's two-year contract was then prematurely terminated in the summer of 2006. For the following season 2006/07 he moved back to KK Partizan in Belgrade, where the club again won the Serbian championship in 2007 and the Adriatic League for the first time . For the 2007/08 season he first returned to Spain and played for the FIBA EuroCup winner Akasvayu in Catalan Girona . After injury problems, his contract was dissolved after eleven championship games in December 2007.

Only a few days after the contract with CB Girona was terminated, Drobnjak signed a contract with Beşiktaş Cola Turka from Istanbul and thus returned to the Turkish capital. On December 26, 2007, he completed his first championship game for the later first place in regular time. The play-off semi-final series was then lost to the cup winner Türk Telekomspor from Ankara . Also in the final tournament Elite Eight of the Eurocup 2007/08 they just failed with one point in the quarter-finals against the Turkish competitor Galatasaray Café Crown . In the following season 2008/09 he was then committed by his former club Efes Pilsen from the end of November, but for which he only played four games in the ULEB Euroleague 2008/09 . In the 2009/10 season he then completed a full season in the Greek A1 Ethniki for PAOK from Thessaloniki . In the Greek championship play-offs they were eliminated in the quarter-finals. In the summer of 2010 he was then able to qualify with the Montenegrin national team for the finals of the 2011 European basketball championship in Lithuania . In the 2010/11 season, however, he only signed a short-term contract with Iraklis, PAOK's local rivals, in February. After only two games, the contract ended and Drobnjak ended his active career, so that he no longer took part in the European Championship finals.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Predrag Drobnjak NBA & ABA Statistics. Basketball-Reference.com, accessed September 26, 2011 .
  2. ^ ACB: Predrag Drobnjak. acb.com, accessed October 3, 2011 (Spanish, player profile).
  3. ^ Predrag Drobnjak, MVP de la 3ª jornada. acb.com, October 24, 2005, accessed October 3, 2011 (Spanish).
  4. ↑ Predrag Drobnjak se desvincula del TAU Cerámica. acb.com, August 23, 2006, accessed October 3, 2011 (Spanish).
  5. ^ Predrag Drobnjak - NLB League ABA. AdriaticBasket.com, accessed on October 3, 2011 (English, 2006/07 season statistics).
  6. ↑ Drobnjak sufre una contractura muscular y es duda para el domingo. acb.com, November 23, 2007, accessed October 3, 2011 (Spanish).
  7. ↑ Akasvayu Girona y Predrag Drobnjak rescinden su contrato de mútuo acuerdo. acb.com, December 21, 2007, accessed October 3, 2011 (Spanish).
  8. ↑ Efes Pilsen announced Predrag Drobnjak. theHoop.blogspot.com, November 29, 2008, accessed October 3, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Drobnjak, Predrag
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Serbian-Montenegrin basketball player
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Bijelo Polje , SR Montenegro, SFR Yugoslavia