Death at the Wing Episode 6: Drazen Petrovic and Basketball’s Cold War ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ Back in 1988, the USA Men’s Basketball team did something they almost never did... ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: The United States found themselves in a position in the last seven minutes of this game of having to score on almost every possession and they could not. After winning 9 of the last 10 Olympics they competed in, they lost. ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: But there’s no time, really, for even a miracle now. And the Soviets are already celebrating. The USA suddenly found itself wearing bronze. It did not go over well. And so, as the dust settled, they decided to do what America does best: get better through hard work, inch by inch, grinding it out… I’m kidding. No, we did the real American thing. ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: What may well be the best basketball team ever assembled… ...which is throwing lots of money at something to make even more money. And so, for the next Olympics, they formed a super squad of sorts. No more amateurs. It was time to bend the rules a little bit and bring in the pros. And, of course, bring in Reebok to sponsor it. ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: And now, the United States of America. This was the Dream Team. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan. This wasn’t about winning gold. This was about buying the whole fucking gold mine. Shock and awe. 1 But in Barcelona in 1992, one player in all of the Olympics didn’t get the memo... or fax. It was the early 90s, after all. While players from Angola and Brazil were more interested in posing for pictures and asking for autographs from the American superstars, this one, solitary player did what he always did. Get buckets. ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: But Petrovic is able to put it home, and we have a one-point ball game. Play after play, no matter what or who they threw at him, this sharpshooter from the Croatian city of Šibenik would not be denied. ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: Drazen Petrovic, 28 points, that’s a three-pointer. He was known as the ‘Mozart of basketball.’ And on the world stage, in this gold medal game, with the lights at their brightest, he would be the highest scorer. His name was Drazen Petrovic and he was a flamethrower. But, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Drazen wasn’t supposed to be wearing a Croatian jersey. He was supposed to be there with his Yugoslavian teammates -- Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, on their own ‘Dream Team.’ The team that many thought could maybe, just maybe, take down the United States. But there’s basketball, and there’s the real world. By the time of the 1992 Olympics, Yugoslavia was no more, its star players scattered across splintered teams or watching from home. We were robbed of an epic matchup, and some of the players felt robbed of their homeland. ARCHIVAL REPORTER: A fragile peace in Yugoslavia is more fragile than ever… And before long, the ‘Mozart of basketball’ would be robbed of his life. REPORTER: ...and the president of Yugoslavia’s largest republic is telling his people to be prepared for war. 2 I’m Adam McKay from Hyperobject Industries and Three Uncanny Four. This is Death at the Wing. Tonight’s episode: Drazen Petrovic, the end of the Cold War, and the rise of international basketball. ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ In the West in the 1980s, individual star power was taking over basketball. Michael Jordan was leading the way, redefining the very nature of an athlete with every Big Mac or sneaker he sold. But Yugoslavia was experiencing its own basketball renaissance. ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: Three more! Petrovic again, another steal for Petrovic, another three. Six in three seconds for Petrovic. Petro came of age in Yugoslavia, a complex, coastal country nestled on an Eastern European peninsula known as the Balkans. ZACH LOWE: He's from a small town in Croatia called Sibenik, which is a town on the coast between Dubrovnik and Split, which are probably the two most popular tourist cities in Croatia. It's a beautiful town. There was a big basketball scene there, and he grew up in and around the game. Zach Lowe, a writer from ESPN, would be the first one to tell you that Sibenik isn’t Rucker Park, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t ball. ZACH LOWE: It was just part of the culture. I believe Drazen’s father played. Lots of current players had fathers and uncles that played. It's always been a big part of the culture. People are very tall in Croatia. That's probably one reason why. They're a very athletic country. Maybe teams there lacked the jaw-dropping athleticism of players in America, but Yugoslavia was inventing its own brand of ball: A collectivist symphony of passing, spreading the floor and letting shots fly from all over the court. It was like socialism on the hardwood. Everyone owned the means of points production. ARCHIVAL Drazen Highlights in Europe 3 Drazen quickly moved up the ranks even as a teenager, from small local squads to the big marquee teams. JOSIP GLAURDIC: There were obviously massive, important clubs. Yugoslav clubs won European championships, and part of it had to do with the fact that, due to the system that was in place, the players couldn't go abroad. Josip Glaurdic is a professor at the university of Luxembourg and author of The Hour of Europe, Western Powers and the Breakup of Yugoslavia. But back in the 80s, he was just a kid from Split. JOSIP GLAURDIC: They had to stay in their country. So that created sort of a huge internal market that where a bunch of little clubs, or rather clubs in small towns, this was their chance to get on the national stage. Drazen’s squad won the Yugoslav championship and the National Cup. The secret was out. U.S. coaches like Notre Dame’s Digger Phelps starting peeking behind the Iron Curtain, hoping to catch a glimpse of this rising phenom. No surprise, any American trying to scout in Yugoslavia faced a maze of bureaucracy and territorial roadblocks. Hell, the overlords of the Yugoslavian basketball world thought that Digger was such a threat, they even spread rumors he was a CIA agent. In fact, they missed the real undercover agent: a former NBA legend named George Mikan, who was running a honeypot trap out of Belgrade, sleeping with high-ranking Yugoslav officials to get top secret classified information. I'm kidding, of course, George Mikan did not run a honeypot trap. Although once again, look up a photo of him. Imagine him doing that. That's why I keep doing bits on Mikan. Where were we? Yes, Yugoslavian basketball. It was basically like an experimental lab for developing basketball talent. JOSIP GLAURDIC: So ironically, it's the closed market that is full of sort of genetic excellence that breeds good competition, even though it's a communist country, and as a result, leads to excellent national teams. Years before Steph Curry and Klay Thompson were the Splash Brothers for the Warriors, there was Drazen and his Yugoslavian teammates, unleashing an aerial assault that would leave modern analytic apostles hyperventilating. 4 JOSIP GLAURDIC: So Drazen Petrovic was, this is why he was so such a thrilling player to watch, he was so efficient and so, so committed. That was what made Drazen so special is that he worked. I mean, he was so committed, so committed. Drazen was still only 19 years old, but he was officially the biggest fish in the Sava River, the closest thing to a unifying hero in a country full of longstanding fractures along internal divisions. Okay, a quick history lesson about one of the most interesting parts of the world. Yugoslavia came together after World War II as a federation of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia, Herzegovina. For decades, it was ruled over by President Josip Broz Tito. Or as they called him, simply Tito. JOSIP GLAURDIC: Initially Yugoslavia was created as more Soviet than the Soviets. Tito's regime was basically very doctrinaire, very committed to creating basically a communist country, and this didn't really fly with Stalin. Stalin basically disciplined Tito and kicked Yugoslavia out of the block, basically thinking that the regime is going to collapse because he simply will not be able to, economically and otherwise, hold the country together. It turns out you don’t ‘out communist’ the biggest commies on the block. JOSIP GLAURDIC: That's when Tito makes a far-reaching, desperate decision to bring Yugoslavia closer to the West. And they appeal, out of necessity, they appeal to the United States, and they ask for assistance. This was the 1950s. The height of the Cold War. Here was America’s chance to get a foothold in the region. JOSIP GLAURDIC: Tito's regime is basically propped up by money from the United States. The goal is basically, Let’s create a palatable alternative to the Soviet bloc. The United States was essential in keeping the regime afloat in the early period. I still have aunts and uncles that remember the powdered milk and the powdered eggs and flour that came from America that literally kept them alive in the early 50s. Perhaps the most surreal example of American influence was the enormous Haludovo Palace Hotel on the Croatian Island of Krk. 5 Funded in part by Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, this sprawling retreat had everything: swimming pool, dance club, bowling alley, and, yes, even a Penthouse casino, where international celebrities were waited on by ‘Penthouse Pets’ in skimpy French maid uniforms.