ZORAN SAVIC - 101 Greats of European Basketball

Zoran
Savic
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The title collector
During the 1988-89 season, the impeccable
scouting of the great Jugoplastika
team coached by Boza Maljkovic followed
closely an unknown center who
played in Celik Zenica of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
on what was then a second-division
team. The reports were positive and in the summer
of 1989 the club from Split, the defending EuroLeague
champion, announced the signing of one Zoran Savic,
who was born on November 18, 1966, in Zenica. Savic
was a center who was almost 23 years old, but few
could have imagined that Jugoplastika had just made a
great signing and even fewer that Yugoslav basketball
had just added a new name to its list of greats.
The first game of the 1989-90 Yugoslav League,
which I saw on TV, had Jugoplastika as the visiting
team, I don’t remember against whom, but perhaps
Cibona Zagreb. What I do remember, however, was that
alongside those great players that had surprisingly
won the European crown in Munich the previous season
– Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja, Dusko Ivanovic, Velimir
Perasovic, Luka Pavicevic, Zoran Sretenovic and Goran
Sobin – a rookie wearing number 13 stood out. Defensive
rebound, two points, offensive rebound, assists,
another rebound, fastbreak, foul drawn, free throw
made. As Bogdan Tanjevic perfectly defines it: “Talent
is like a shorter leg. You can see it right away.”
That’s how Zoran Savic started his career, in style.
He was not a young talent who had starred on youth
teams of a great club in the old Yugoslavia. In fact, until
he was 16 years old, Savic didn’t even play basketball.
His path was slow, with obstacles, and most of all, with
lots of hard work. At that age, he was sent on loan to Capljina
Borac where he played with Jasmin Repesa – with
whom he later won the Italian League title at Fortitudo
Bologna. But life was fair to Savic. His great will to work
paid off with the chance given to him by Maljkovic – and
Savic used it. In his first season playing elite basketball,
he played more like a veteran than a rookie. The first
title arrived in February, when Jugoplastika defeated
Crvena Zvezda 79-77 in the Yugoslav Cup final played
in Dubrovnik. On April 19, in Zaragoza, Jugoplastika
won its second straight European crown by defeating
FC Barcelona in the final 72-67 with 4 points and 7 rebounds
from Savic. In May, Jugoplastika won its third
straight Yugoslav League title and coach Dusan Ivkovic
called Savic among the candidates for the Yugoslavia
team at the 1990 World Cup in Argentina.
A rookie world champion
Against tradition and custom, Savic made his debut
in the top national team at 24 years of age. He stayed
with the team until he voluntarily retired after the 1997
EuroBasket in Barcelona. Yugoslavia, first as a united
country including all its regions, and later in a reduced
version only with Serbia and Montenegro, always had
talented players with world fame like Drazen Petrovic,
Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, Sasha Djordjevic, Predrag
Danilovic, Zarko Paspalj or Dejan Bodiroga. But in all its
schemes and systems, first with Coach Ivkovic and later
with Zeljko Obradovic, there was a key piece: Zoran
Savic.
Year after year, Savic improved his technique and
his physical strength, and with a great work ethic he became
a very useful player. He lacked height, but he had
everything else: rebounds, good shooting, assists and
101 greats of european basketball
Zoran Savic
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Vladimir Stankovic
broad shoulders to keep taller, stronger opponents at
bay. Also, he was very smart, because he understood
the game like few big men. He came back from Buenos
Aires in 1990 as a world champion, having averaged 8.6
points and 2.7 boards. He was the fourth-best scorer
on a very powerful team, after Petrovic (18.4), Kukoc
(16.5) and Paspalj (13.0), but ahead of Divac (8.2). In the
semifinals against a good Team USA, playing against
Alonzo Mourning, Savic scored 14 points and added 5
rebounds.
Half a year later, on April 18, 1991, in Paris, Jugoplastika
won its third straight continental final, once
again beating FC Barcelona, which was now coached
by Maljkovic. The Split team, with Zeljko Pavlicevic now
at the helm, won by the score of 70-65. The MVP of
the tourney was Kukoc, but the man of the final was
Savic, who scored 27 points and added 4 rebounds.
That’s still the scoring record of a Final Four championship
game, shared with a few other players. In the
summer of that year, at the 1991 EuroBasket in Rome,
Savic won the gold medal with a complete Yugoslavia
for the last time (even though Slovenian Jure Zdovc
had to leave the team before the semifinals). With the
start of the war in Yugoslavia, Savic left Split and in
October of 1991 signed for FC Barcelona. Two years
later he moved to Greece to play with PAOK Thessaloniki.
Those are the “empty” years of his career, as he
did not add any titles. With PAOK, in 1994, he won his
third European trophy, the Korac Cup, after two wins
over Stefanel Trieste. In the game in Thessaloniki,
a 75-66 victory, Savic contributed 15 points and 10
boards while in Trieste, a 100-91 win, he had 8 points
and 2 rebounds. In his second PAOK season, Savic
won the Greek Cup. Due to international sanctions, he
could not play at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona with
Yugoslavia, the 1993 EuroBasket in Germany or the
1994 World Cup in Toronto.
Success in 19 of 21 finals
Yugoslavia was back for the 1995 EuroBasket in
Athens and was back in style: taking the gold in an
unforgettable title game victory, 96-90 against a Lithuania
team with Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Marculionis,
Rimas Kurtinaitis, Valdemaras Chomicius and Arturas
Karnisovas. On the other side were Divac, Bodiroga,
Djordjevic (41 points, 9 of 12 threes), Danilovic, Paspalj,
Dejan Tomasevic and Savic. For the tournament, Savic
averaged 11 points and 4 rebounds.
After his great tournament, Zeljko Obradovic, the
national team coach, took Savic to Real Madrid with
him. He played a solid season (16.4 ppg) but in the 1996
Final Four in Paris, Real Madrid lost to FC Barcelona in
the semifinals. Savic’s next stop was Italy as he signed
for Kinder Bologna under Ettore Messina. In the summer
of 1996, Savic took a silver medal with Yugoslavia
at the Atlanta Olympics, but he missed the title game
against the USA due to a twisted ankle from the semis
against Lithuania.
Savic’s first year in Bologna ended up blank, but
he found some consolation at the 1997 EuroBasket in
Barcelona as Yugoslavia won the gold medal, Savic’s
sixth, to go with an Olympic silver, plus a Korac Cup and
a Greek Cup. In the 1997-98 season, he won the triple
crown: EuroLeague, Italian League and Italian Cup with
Kinder. He won his third European crown at Palau Sant
Jordi in Barcelona, just where he had started his international
career years earlier. He played alongside Danilovic,
Augusto Binelli, Hugo Sconochini, Alessandro
Abbio and Radoslav Nesterovic to defeat AEK Athens in
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etired, the numbers said the between clubs and the
national team, he had won 19 of the 21 finals he played,
a rate of 90.5%! Indeed, Savic was a title collector. If we
add in two Yugoslav Supercups he has 20 titles and an
Olympic medal, though “only” a silver.
After his great career as a player, Savic worked as
the general manager of Fortitudo Bologna from 2002
to 2005, reaching the 2004 EuroLeague title game and
winning the 2005 Italian League alongside head coach
Jasmin Repesa, his old teammate at Capljina. Savic held
the same position at FC Barcelona later, when the club
won a Spanish King’s Cup title and reached the 2006
EuroLeague Final Four in Prague. Since 2010, he is a
founding member and owner of the Invictus Sports
Group, representing players and some coaches like
Xavi Pascual, Simone Pianigiani and Zan Tabak.
Zoran Savic
the final 58-44, after which Savic was chosen MVP. His
trophy collection had reached the double figures.
Later in 1998, Savic started his Turkish adventure,
signing with an ambitious Efes Pilsen, but a serious injury
had him sidelined most of that year. Despite that,
he added a new title, that country’s President’s Cup. In
the 2000-01 season, at 34 years old, Savic went back
to Barcelona and won the Spanish King’s Cup plus the
Spanish League. He played one more year in Bologna,
this time on the other side, with Fortitudo. When he
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