Dražen – za sva vrimena (Dražen – for all time).

This article is from October of 2019, just a month before we were in Zagreb. Had our tight schedule permitted, I'd have suggested we stop by the museum.

The music video Dražen – za sva vrimena (Dražen – for all time) was presented at a ceremony at the Dražen Petrović Musem – Memorial Centre in Zagreb where it was also announced that a musical dedicated to the legend will premiere next year.

Following is an excellent appreciation of Dražen Petrović. When Petrović went to the NBA, it was just before the horrific Yugoslav civil war, and it's fair to say that all of eastern-central Europe knew who he was, and enjoyed seeing his success in America. Certainly he was known and respected in Slovakia, where I taught in 1991-1992.

The fact of his symbolic role in the fratricide (he "chose" Croatia in spite of his father being from Serbia) gives me pause, because Yugoslavia's disintegration is a fiendishly difficult topic that cannot be blamed on a relatively small number of war criminals. There were too few heroes in the conflict.

And yet quite obviously, Petrović didn't start the war. Those seeds were planted decades before his birth, and what's more, his premature death at only 28 precludes us from knowing how he'd have chosen to be part of the postwar recovery.

What I continue to appreciate about basketball in general terms, and the NBA in particular, is the way it has become a truly international sport. That opening wave of European players 30-odd years ago transfixed this Europhile. I can't say Petrović was my favorite player then -- that'd be Arvydas Sabonis, the best passer for a big man ever -- but I definitely was a fan.

Drazen’s Keepers, by Jeff Greer (Medium)

... It is these people, Croatians from all walks of life, who make up Drazen’s Keepers, those who carry on his transcendent legacy in a country still hurting from the shocking car crash that killed Petrovic in his prime 27 years ago. One of the most accomplished players in European basketball history, Drazen was the first European named to an All-NBA team, a pioneer in crossing the Atlantic to play on the biggest stage in hoops. He remains even bigger than that to his compatriots: a projection of what Croatians want athletically, culturally and morally in their ideal heroes. Visiting his tomb in Zagreb and the statues and museums dedicated to him across the country has become a rite of passage. He is immortalized through the stories Croatians tell. And Drazen’s Keepers pass on his memory — a memory that often drifts between past and present as if their hero never really died at all — so the newest generations of Croatians understand just who Drazen was, and why he is still so important to their young nation.

Eight Days of Gdansk, November 2: Marcin Gortat on Polish basketball, and prospects for a game in Tricity.

A native of Łódź in Poland, Marcin Gortat currently plays for the Los Angeles Clippers. This is Gortat's 13th season in the NBA, and in this essay from 2016, he tells his own basketball story and describes the sport's progress in Poland.

How We Play Basketball in Poland, by Marcin Gortat (The Players' Tribune)

... The state of basketball in Poland right now is … well, it’s not great.

Understand, in Poland we don’t have four or five guys making it to the NBA every year like in France or Spain. I’m the fourth Polish guy to ever make it to the NBA, and given the state of our national-team program, there probably won’t be another one for a long time.

That’s because we don’t really have a program to teach the game to young kids. I’ve been doing my best to help, with youth camps and an initiative that sends promising young players to America to play AAU ball, and then brings them back to Poland to play for the national team. But it will be a few more years until the first group of players completes the program.

It wasn’t always this way. We used to be better. Poland used to love basketball. In the ’60s and ’70s our national team played in almost every Olympics, and we were competitive. But since 1984, the year I was born, Poland hasn’t qualified once for the Games.

There was even a time when NBA games were on TV in Poland. After watching Michael Jordan, Grant Hill and Shaq, kids would want to go outside and play street ball. But when basketball left public TV due to something called the Broadcasting Act of 1992, that’s when everything started to really fall apart.

Gortat surely is the best male basketball player from Poland. The finest female player might have been the late Margo Dydek, who was 7' 2" and played in the WNBA prior to her untimely death in 2011.

The Confidentials enjoy their off-season travel, and this has meant the occasional opportunity to watch basketball games in Europe, first in Bamberg and most recently in Porto, Portugal in February.

The Polish cities of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia are known collectively as Tricity (Trójmiasto), with a combined metropolitan population well north of 1,000,000.

Sopot lies between Gdansk and Gdynia.

Tricity supports two teams in the Polish Basketball League, which has existed in various forms since the late 1940s: Asseco Gdynia and Trefl Sopot. Ironically, the primary indoor arena in Tricity is located within the boundaries of Sopot, which lies between Gdansk and Gdynia; holding 15,000 spectators, the home of Trefl Sopot is the largest arena in the league even though Sopot itself has a population of only 40,000.

Perusing the schedules in advance of our departure, I see there are three possibilities for seeing a game, with two dates for Asseco Gdynia and one for Trefl Sopot.

We'll do at least one of them, and I'll tell you about it once we're back home. If there is beer and kielbasa, that's even better.

Larry Bird has an elephant's memory.

Interestingly, Springs Valley went to the Final Four in its first year of consolidation, although this doesn't detract from the sheer entertainment value of Larry Bird recalling a teammate's missed free throws 40 years later.

Didn't Bob Lane play at Springs Valley, too?

Larry Bird on 1-on-1 vs. Michael Jordan: 'He'd kill me', by Matthew Glenesk (Indy Star)

Dan Patrick: Explain that whole “Hoosiers” phenomenon in Indiana. How small was your high school?

Larry Bird: Oh, I don’t know. We were one of the smallest in the state. What it is, back in the day, back when I played, they didn’t have class basketball, now they do. So the dream was to always be good enough to play against the big schools. That’s what we tried to do. Try to be good enough to have the opportunity to play a Crispus Attucks or a Jeffersonville or New Albany, but unfortunately I played with a kid that kept missing free throws at the end of the game, and we didn’t get there.

30 for 30: Vlade Divac, Drazen Petrovic, basketball and Yugoslav civil war.

I am/was a fan of both players. The documentary was first aired back in October, and it showed again yesterday; we just happened upon it, and were spellbound.

Very, very moving.

He dribbles, pumps, fakes ... and ... and ...

I've received a campaign message from Ron Grooms, via Facebook.

Ron Grooms (October 19, 2010 at 12:05pm) ... Subject: Final Days to Victory

My high school basketball coach used to say, stay focused, stay ready and follow through on each shot.

I snipped the remainder, which was about phone banks, yard signs and such. What I'm wondering is this: What kind of roundball offense is denoted by serial abstentions on key issues?

Is it Dean Smith's keep-away Four Corner?

It may have been a while since the candidate played, so might someone tell him that in basketball, logically speaking, the "follow through" must be preceded by actually launching a shot.

Beer-induced, Flaming Cougarhawk mania.

I seldom cross-post with my Potable Curmudgeon blog, but this piece was so much fun that an exception is merited. For more information on Gravity Head 2007 ("Gravity Madness: March Isn't Just About Basketball Anymore"), see: Badness and Preliminary Orders.

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Perceptive reader Edward has noticed the inscription on the Gravity Head 2007 mascot’s basketball jersey, and he asks, undoubtedly smirking:

Can you tell the story behind Flaming Cougarhawks?

Not without pain, but here goes.

It is a widely and deservedly forgotten fact that while serving acne time during high school, your faithful Curmudgeon was a two-year varsity basketball player at Floyd Central. My active hoops participation ceased after our ignominious defeat in the morning session of the Seymour regional in 1978, after which spent the afternoon drinking Little Kings with friends in their Daze Inn hotel room before proceeding to an equally lackluster career of grabbing innings of varsity baseball pine.

Upon graduation, a regimen-free summer was spent lounging with like-minded pals, especially those with skills at being served, which magically added 25 pounds of non-muscle mass (i.e., goo) to an otherwise spindly frame.

A steadily growing affection for beer in its cheapest available incarnation accompanied four years of intramural basketball competition at Indiana University Southeast, and it should come as no surprise that my best-ever senior IM squad was called the Inebriates. By the mid-1980’s, activities like softball, walking and riding trains between European beer shrines had replaced organized basketball as my generally preferred forms of exercise, but as so often is the case, and without warning, there was to be an entirely unexpected roundball comeback.

It happened in 1999.

A group of Rich O’s Public House regulars, all of whom love the game of basketball – some of them can still be glimpsed limping to the bar for their daily medicinal pints – somehow fell into a summertime routine of meeting on Sundays atop the asphalt parking lot of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and shooting hoops, which led to half-court games followed by restorative ale drinking at the Shelbyville Road location of Bluegrass Brewing Company … and, fueled by these post-game sessions, led eventually to a bizarre delusion that we were good enough to compete in the autumn YMCA recreational league in Clarksville.

Mark, our starting guard and coach, did the paperwork, and I purchased garish bluish purple team jerseys for the team, which had been dubbed the Flaming Cougarhawks in honor of … owing to … hmmm, the ironic thing is that I have no memory of the naming process other than to suggest that we must have been drinking BBC APA when it happened.

When the newly minted Flaming Cougarhawks stepped onto the hardwood for their first-ever game, the average age of the starting lineup was about 35, and it quickly doubled when we suddenly realized that a regulation full court is very, very big, and that the opposing team of recently graduated 19-year-olds was very, very fast.

We outweighed them, though, and this came in handy on those rare occasions when one of us could catch up with one of them. Calling on long-neglected reserves of thespian talent, I duped the referee into calling a shooting foul and scored the first point in team history on a free throw. Moments later I jammed my right ankle and was lost for the season. The Flaming Cougarhawks dropped each and every game on the schedule, although we came close enough once to justify another BBC drinking spree.

Those young pups couldn’t touch us there, on our true home court.

(Thanks to Jared and Tony for remembering!)