Dražen Petrović
Dražen Petrović ( born October 22, 1964 in Šibenik, SFR Yugoslavia; † 7 June 1993 Denkendorf ) was a Yugoslav and Croatian professional basketball player and played at a height of 1.96 m on the position of shooting guard. He is generally considered one of the best European basketball player of all time and is still revered by many fans as a basketball legend and one of the most successful Europeans in the U.S. professional league NBA. With the national team of the former Yugoslavia, he came once world champion and European champion. With Cibona Zagreb he won, among others, the European Champion Clubs' Cup. In 2002, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in the NBA. Four times the Italian Gazzetta dello Sport voted him best European basketball (1986, '89, '92 and '93). 2008 Petrović was named one of the 50 greatest players in the history of the European League. Because of its elegant style of play he was called "Mozart of the parquet ."
Life
Petrović was born the son of the Serbian police and the Croatian Jovan Petrović Biserka in Šibenik, a port city on the Adriatic Sea, in the former Yugoslavia. Dražen Petrović was the second child of the couple. The first child, Aleksandar, was that which first found its way into the sport of basketball, whose lead to follow him Dražen. Drazen was a second cousin of the Serbian basketball player Dejan Bodiroga. Dejan's grandmother ( father's side) and Drazen's grandfather ( also paternal ) are siblings, so Bodiroga and Petrović cousins are second degree.
Early his extraordinary talent was recognized and thus he was already playing at the age of 15 years as one of the strongest clearly has traditionally been in the national team of Yugoslavia in the world. At 18, he was already considered the best player in Yugoslavia and scouts from American universities were aware of him, so he was offered several sports scholarships, but none of them took.
After a year of military service in the army he joined in 1985 by KK KK Cibona Zagreb Šibenik. There he won the dozen titles and trophies, including the national championship and the Korac Cup. In his four years with Cibona he reached in the first Yugoslav League a points average of 37.7 points in the European arena, he scored an average of 33.8 points. His points high score in a league game was 112 points in a European Cup match 62 points. In 1986, he was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers at 60th place of the NBA draft. After a brief stopover at Real Madrid (1988 /89), with whom he won the Spanish Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup and still holds the league points record for the most goals in a final series game points, Petrović joined the NBA.
His rookie season in Portland was worse than expected, behind superstar Clyde Drexler got Petrović little playing time. In 1991 he moved to the New Jersey Nets and made there his breakthrough. In the season 92/93 he threw on average 22.3 points per game, until then best performance of a European basketball player in the NBA. Ten years later, the record of Dirk Nowitzki was exceeded. At the Olympic Games in Barcelona, the Croatian national team was defeated by Petrović only in the finale of the U.S. Dream Team.
Petrović ' contract with the Nets ran out in 1993. In order to improve its negotiating position at the upcoming contract negotiations, Petrović scattered rumors that he might be at another club, possibly in Europe, signed. The management of the Nets still could be in contract negotiations time, so Petrović negotiated among others with Panathinaikos Athens. The last offer of the Nets was $ 13.5 million for four years; remains unclear whether Petrović had accepted the offer. Panathinaikos offered according to him, rumors sign a blank contract in which Petrović the content itself could enter. To this day, keep speculation that Petrovic had agreed to the contract terms Panathinaikos. Club Vice President Athanassios Giannakopoulos confirmed this again in an interview in May 2007.
Drazen Petrovic died in June 1993 as a passenger in a car accident on the A9 near Ingolstadt. The driver of the passenger car was his then girlfriend Klara Szalantzy. She survived the accident and is married to Oliver Bierhoff since 2001. The end of 1993 withdrew the Nets Petrovic's number 3 jersey. Tennis player Goran Ivanisevic, a close friend of Petrović, dedicated to him his Wimbledon victory of 2001. 2007 he was accepted as one of the first players in the newly created FIBA Hall of Fame. He was buried at the Mirogoj Cemetery in Zagreb.
National team
- Balkan Championship Juniors 1982 Best Player
- World Cup 1986 MVP
- European Championship 1989 MVP