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Death at the Wing Episode 6: Drazen Petrovic and ’s Cold War

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Back in 1988, the USA Men’s Basketball team did something they almost never did...

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: The 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 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. , , . This wasn’t about winning gold. This was about buying the whole fucking gold mine. Shock and awe.

1 But in 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- 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 -- , 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.

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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 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 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 . 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. 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 , 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 were the 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, , 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 , 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.

I guess if you take a capitalist’s money, sometimes you get a bit more than you bargained for.

This basic arrangement between the Americans and Yugoslavians continued for decades. Through nuclear escalation, multiple U.S. and Soviet leadership changes, Yugoslavia rode that knife’s edge.

But Drazen had other things on his mind. He just wanted to ball, racking up Player of the Year awards and championships.

And he was starting to hit his ceiling in his own country.

He had scored 112 points in a single game during a championship tournament, and averaged 41.4 per game during the 85/86 season. That’s a ceiling.

But Drazen wasn’t allowed to leave for the NBA. However, in the words of Drazen’s agent at the time: “Every problem in Yugoslavia can be taken care of with the right amount of money.”

So after the right amount of money hit the right hands, Petro entered the 1986 NBA . And as the ‘Mozart of basketball,’ a prodigy from Europe, was drafted at the incredibly high number of… 60. That’s right. 60th.

Some of the players drafted before him sound almost made up: Ron Kellogg? Anyone remember him? Keith Colbert? Scott Dellegraccio? Alright, I actually did make that name up.

But this was a different time. Foreign-born players had only started to make their way to the NBA, and for a lot of the scouts, Europeans in particular were considered, well… softer than a finger roll.

ZACH LOWE: There was a certain idea in NBA circles, an idea that European players and coaches were very aware of, that, ‘OK, the big guys, sure. They can add something.’ There was a suspicion about any guard. Were they going to be athletic enough for] a position that requires a great deal of speed and athleticism, at least in the traditional terms that we think about it.

6 But here’s the thing: No one had ever seen anything like Drazen before.

TODD BOYD: There was a difference between the way white guys from places like Yugoslavia and Russia played basketball and white Americans played basketball.

Todd Boyd, professor at USC, and all-around media expert.

TODD BOYD: This is the time when the number of white Americans playing basketball is steadily decreasing. When I first started watching basketball, most teams were 50/50 black and white. Maybe 55/45. Then over time, the balance increased more. By the ‘90s, it was very different.

But these Eastern European dudes, like Petro, were playing the game at a level that you didn't see from white American players, for people making associations based on race.

But all those European accolades didn’t matter when Drazen landed in Portland, because the Blazers, well, they were stacked at the wing.

ZACH LOWE: I mean, that was a team that was a Finals contender. , . They later acquired , , they were not hurting for talent.

Drazen only knew how to play one way, and that was all out. But he was stuck at the end of the bench, so that energy has to go somewhere.

Blazers teammate Danny Ainge says that one time, between two-a-day practices, he and Petrovic went back to Petrovic’s apartment to get some rest between workouts. But not Petro. He climbed up on an exercise bike he’d just bought and started riding it at full speed for the entire break.

"Not playing bothered him more than anyone I ever met," Ainge said.

‘You think I’m soft? I’ll drain threes in your face. Lazy? I’ll keep working out until I break. Some privileged European in a league full of Black players? No, I fought for everything I’ve got. I’m from a tough country constantly fighting to survive in the shadow of the Iron Curtain.’

But meanwhile, back in Eastern Europe...

ARCHIVAL

7 ANCHOR: We interrupt this program for an NBC News special report. Here’s is Garett Cuffley.

REPORTER: Good afternoon we have a late and truly a really sensational report coming in from East Germany…

Things were about to get messy. We’ll get into that after the break.

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ARCHIVAL FROM 1950s REAGAN: The crusade for freedom is your chance to fight communism. Join now by sending your contributions to General Clay, Crusade For Freedom, Empire State Building, ...

Ronald Reagan first made political waves in the 40s and 50s as president of the Actors Guild. He was a proud union man from the liberal bastion of Hollywood.

But behind closed doors, the Red Scare, that magical moment when the average American saw communists lurking around every corner, was quickly becoming a dominant force in his life.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: If a person consistently reads and advocates the views expressed in a communist publication, he may be a communist...

See, it all started when FBI agents paid an unannounced visit to Reagan’s house in 1946, wanting him to spill the beans on all those Tinseltown communist sympathizers. And Ronnie, always the polite midwesterner, was more than happy to help. He quickly became a trusted informant. He even had a codename: T-10.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: If a person supports organizations which reflect communist teachings or organizations labeled communist by the department of justice, she may be a communist…

Soon Reagan was testifying before the House Committee on Un-American Activities -- the cowboy turned red scare-monger.

ARCHIVAL

8 ANNOUNCER: If a person defends the activities of communist nations while consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, she may be a communist...

In 1964, he barnstomed the country for extreme right-wing presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, delivering a speech tailor-made to his new image as a Cold War warrior.

ARCHIVAL RONALD REAGAN: We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Reagan was a true believer. An anti-pinko to his core. But he also was a salesman.

By the time he became President of the United States, some 30 years later, he’d even made it part of his presidential punchlines:

ARCHIVAL REAGAN: My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to tell you I’ve signed legislation to outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

It’s a funny joke, hundreds of millions of people dying in a nuclear hellscape. Come on, quit being so serious.

We’ve all heard the usual narrative. The one with missiles and machismo, spycraft and Star Wars systems being launched into space. Rambo. *Rambo voice* “Hey, I’m not going to share my earnings, I’m no commie.” The one where Ronnie Reagan rode a Red, White and Blue horse into the of Red Scare and started singing “The Star Spangled Banner” so beautifully that all of communism immediately shriveled up and died.

ARCHIVAL REAGAN: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

But there’s another story about the end of the Cold War. One that has a lot to do with internal Soviet troubles. And one where if the Americans do deserve some credit, it has less to do with ballistics and more with, well...

ARCHIVAL

9 COMMERCIAL: *singing* There’s a blues that makes me feel good. Levi’s 501 blues… oh yeah!

That’s right, blue jeans, baby. American-made denim. Nothing says land of the free like a pair of boot-cut Levi’s.

Blue jeans were considered a symbol of Western decadence in the Soviet Union, a capitalist extravagance. Anyone with a passport and suitcase, from diplomats and dignitaries to sailors pulling into port, was sneaking in enough denim to turn the whole country blue. And that was enough to freak out the people in power. “The Party.”

“Jean crimes,” as they were called, swept the nation. People were being stabbed, slashed, and robbed for a pair of pants. Tourists found themselves being offered hundreds of rubles on the spot to buy the dungarees right off their behinds.

And the timing was no coincidence. An explosion of technology had transformed the Soviet Union in the 80s, just as it had everywhere else in the world. It was getting harder and harder for the party in the USSR to control the supply of the thing that really mattered: information.

JONATHAN WEILER: It's often been argued that one of the really important factors, underlying factors, in ultimately drawing so many East Germans into the streets to protest their government, especially in 1989, was that a lot of them had access to West German television.

This is Jonathan Weiler, a professor of global studies at UNC Chapel Hill, and host of the podcast Agony of Defeat.

JONATHAN WEILER: And they could see the extraordinary difference in standard of living and quality of life between West Germany and East Germany.

And this explosion of access helped set the stage for one more international export: the NBA.

Even at its very height, the U.S. and the Soviet Union couldn’t resist letting their rivalry play out on the court.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: Don’t forget, the Soviets really want to win one of these games, they’ve lost the first two, and this is a ballclub that represents the cream of the crop of the Soviet

10 Republic, some near 300 million people. So they obviously have some great basketball players.

From chess to tennis to hockey, U.S. athletes were regularly going on tours of the Soviet bloc. By 1988, it was finally the rising stars of the NBA’s turn.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: Meanwhile, the Hawks just kind of picked up, they came here in different shifts and got here at different times in their offseason after being off for two months and have won the first two games.

That’s right. The once took a trip behind the Iron Curtain.

JEREMY WOO: in particular had been a globally minded thinker. This [collided] with the Soviet Union. Obviously one of their big things was sports and athletic dominance.

This is Jeremy Woo, staff writer with .

JEREMY WOO: From the NBA standpoint, there was an opportunity to sort of spread the game, bridge that gap culturally.

Perfectly on cue, here comes players like , Spud Webb, and “the Human Highlight Reel” himself , ready to show these Soviets how to hoop for real.

JEREMY WOO: And I think Ted Turner being the owner of the Hawks was another big factor as to why they were the team that went. With TBS, I think they all saw an opportunity there to kind of spread the NBA and kind of grow the game in different ways.

And the trip really was bonkers.

JEREMY WOO: The accommodations were not great. They didn't take a charter flight. I was told there were live animals on the flight.

Bug-infested practice courts, starving players bartering with each other for food.

But to the surprise of both sides, the Soviets and the American players actually hit it off, despite the language barrier.

11 American players even invited the Soviets out for a night on the town which the KGB covertly shut down by telling the Americans everything was closed.

Didn’t matter though. With this openness came friendship, and a new way of viewing the world.

Soviet players like Sasha Volkov and Sarunas Marčiulionis were even allowed to jump to the NBA.

If the Dream Team would eventually help turn the game global, this trip helped light the spark. Walls were breaking down, between basketball players and the two superpowers.

By the mid-80s, all the different types of power, hard and soft, had pushed the Soviet Union to a breaking point.

And U.S. leadership had softened its rhetoric, too, as Reagan and then George H.W. Bush found a legitimate negotiating partner in Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

There was just one problem: The entire Conservative movement had spent the previous 40 years trying to take down the Soviet Union, but they never, y’know, figured out what would come next.

JONATHAN WEILER: There were also people in the West who were clamoring for the United States to provide the Soviet Union with some significant aid, something like a Marshall Plan, to stabilize the Soviet Union and to facilitate its transition to a kind of Western capitalist economy. The Bush administration thought about that, and they ultimately decided to just let things play out.

The result? Goodbye, Soviet Union. Hello, chaos.

JONATHAN WEILER: Even though they were concerned about the instability in the Soviet system at that time, they also were quite eager to see the system fall apart.

It’s one thing to push for the breakup of the Soviet Union, but no one was really thinking about picking up the pieces.

JOSIP GLAURDIC: We all sort of remember the elation of the time that the Berlin Wall was falling.

That’s Josip Glaurdic again, professor of political science.

12 JOSIP GLAURDIC: Europe is going to finally be whole and free now that these old divisions are ending. And President George H.W. Bush gives obviously his famous or infamous speech, about the “new world order” coming.

ARCHIVAL - GEORGE H.W. BUSH: A new world order can emerge. A new era, freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.

JOSIP GLAURDIC: Where basically the big powers that are going to discipline middle powers in order to keep the little powers stable.

But very quickly, this philosophy shifted to another part of the world.

ARCHIVAL REPORTER: The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated. We’re seeing bright flashes all over the sky.

It’s hard to overstate just how much the first Gulf War changed everything.

For the entire 80s, the focus of U.S. foreign policy, and the entire public attention, was on the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, and U.S. meddling in Latin America.

Then in August 1990, just nine months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the cruise missiles started flying towards Baghdad. And it was like someone just changed the channel, and we’ve never changed it back.

The Middle East became the only thing that mattered when it came to foreign policy for the U.S.

Meanwhile, back in Eastern Europe, away from the prying eyes of Western attention, things were just falling apart.

A power vacuum had been left behind in Yugoslavia. And for Slobodan Milošević, the leader of Yugoslavia, this is almost a god send. He’s been waiting his whole career for a moment like this. A chance to turn the complex society of Yugoslavia into a singular Serbian state.

13 JOSIP GLAURDIC: What if we sort of wrap our platform in the garbs of, “Hey, we're protecting Yugoslavia, but actually, we pursue our true goal, which is basically, we want to control the biggest possible part of Yugoslavia, violently if necessary.” And what follows throughout the summer and fall of 1991 is the horribly bloody war.

We get essentially a war for territory that turns into basically an effort of the army of the Bosnian , which is essentially the Yugoslav army, that starts sort of quote unquote “mopping up” territory, which essentially means ethnically cleansing these enclaves of Bosnian Muslims.

This was only the start of a full-blown war that touched every corner of the former Yugoslavia. Serbians slaughtering their fellow countrymen in the name of national unity.

Americans had failed to help the former Soviet Union financially as it was falling to pieces. Now, they were failing to step in when Yugoslavia needed help.

The result was darkly predictable.

JOSIP GLAURDIC: The wars are horrible. They destroyed societies. They destroyed communities, not to mention that it killed 120, 130,000 people. They displaced some 3 or 4 million people. I mean, in a country of about 20 million, 22 million that Yugoslvia was, about 4 million people had the experience of being a refugee for a significant part of time.

Oh, and that decadent seaside hideaway? The one funded with Penthouse cash? It was now filled with terrified Croatian refugees.

At this exact same time, the Yugoslavian national team had been playing its very best basketball.

With Drazen Petrovic leading the way, teammates like Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja and Vlade Divac, this was a team that was rewriting what was possible in European basketball.

Now that was all over. Their team ripped apart.

ARCHIVAL REPORTER: That latest breakdown of talks would bring doom.

And soon, miles away from the war, the ‘Mozart of basketball’ would meet his own horrific end.

That’s coming up after the break.

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By 1991, the Yugoslavian national team, made up of Croatians, Serbians, Slovenians, Montenegrins, had been playing together for years. Now, their friends and relatives were facing off against each other, their homeland falling apart, awash in blood.

''Nobody can understand this war,” Vlade Divac said at the time. “I’m Yugoslavian, and I can’t understand.''

The fracturing had first become evident as the team accepted their gold medals at the 1991 EuroBasket championship, following a dominant showing in which they won their games by an average of 21.6 points.

Now, as the Yugoslavian anthem played, Divac noticed that his teammate Velimir Perasovic wasn't singing. ''Why don't you sing?,' he asked.

“I shouldn't,” Perasovic answered.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: A capacity crowd, 12,500 turning out in scores…

The 1992 Olympics, which was going to be the team’s crowning moment, now served as a symbol that brother had turned against brother. ''We have a team but no country,'' Petrovic said at the time.

Vlade and Drazen, who were both playing professionally in the United States by then, couldn’t escape the tensions roiling their home country.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: They were together, they were friends on this Yugoslavia team, but then when they had their civil war, the Serbs and the Croatians were on opposite ends. Their relationship was completely frayed.

Sports writer Jackie McMullan remembers it well.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: Drazen wouldn't speak to him because Vlade was Serbian. And I always thought, what a shame, you know, for all those players who had grown up together, trying to win as one.

ARCHIVAL

15 ERNIE JOHNSON: You were very close, played together in Yugoslavia. But you're Croatian. He is Serbian. Have you spoken in the two times your teams have gotten together? PETROVIC: No, we didn't spoke [sic]. And I was real close to him my first year when I was playing in Portland. But, you know, the things get rough in our country and, we didn't spoke [sic] since then. JOHNSON: Is that because honestly you do not like Vlade Divac now or because you can't allow yourself to talk to him? PETROVIC: I like Vlade, I think he's a real good guy, and he's a good basketball player, but you know, it's kind of a more political thing than anything else.

Only the newly formed Croatia managed to field a squad for the Olympics, with Drazen and Toni Kukoc.

Divac, and the rest of the Serbian players, with no team of their own, had to watch the competition from home.

It was under this dark shadow that Drazen finally had his coming out party. Dream Teamer said Petrovic was the only player at the Olympics that year who actually believed he could beat the US.

ZACH LOWE: And you know, they they pushed the U.S. pretty hard. Croatia got to the gold medal game against the Dream Team. They finished obviously in the Silver, but it's one of the great What Ifs. What if we could reunite the country again just for sports? How good could that team have been?

For America, it was a triumphant moment, for its ideals and more importantly its brand. The last superpower of basketball and the world.

But as hard as things had become off the court, Drazen was finally proving to American audiences what he could do on it. He followed up his stellar run at the Olympics with his best season as a pro, finally freed from the logjam in Portland.

KENNY ANDERSON: So he got traded to New Jersey Nets and that's where he launched his pro career.

Kenny Anderson, proud son of Queens, 14-year NBA vet, and Drazen’s teammate with the Nets.

16 KENNY ANDERSON: He never talked about what was going on in his country, to me. He never talked to me. He just played the game. I really believe he wanted to just make his mark over in the NBA.

The USA may have been somewhat responsible for the hell his homeland was going through, but it was also turning him into a basketball icon.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: Petro! Got off. Wow, what strength to use that pump to right himself. 38 for Petro.

KENNY ANDERSON: And he got the opportunity to play a lot and to shoot a lot and to be himself with the New Jersey Nets. And it was great to see him performing on a higher level in the NBA. And he just was a good guy.

Petro was a good guy who was finally scoring like he did in Europe. And when all else failed in the NBA, he had some other tricks as well.

KENNY ANDERSON: His under arms was smelly. He said that they would keep the defense away from him. He wouldn't use deodorant and all that, because it would keep the guys on defense off him.

Drazen’s basketball dreams were finally coming true. Third team All NBA. Plus, the dynamic trio of Kenny Anderson, and Drazen were poised to do some damage in the East.

KENNY ANDERSON: We would have really held our own, and each year we was getting closer and closer. And I thought, you know, if he was coming back, we was all going to come back and I thought we was going to do it.

Drazen was poised to sign a new contract with the Nets, one that would make him the second-richest in the NBA. The other was... who else? The face of Nike. His airness. Michael Jordan.

So that summer Petrovic made his way back to Europe. And with his girlfriend behind the wheel, a friend in the backseat, the three set off from Germany on the Autobahn.

Next stop, Croatia. Home. But they would never make it there.

ARCHIVAL

17 REPORTER: Petrovic was killed late yesterday when his car slammed into a truck near Munich Germany in heavy rain. Drazen Petrovic was 28.

A car crash. Something that happens everyday. But this one would rob a new country of its hero. An old country of its hero, too. Two teams of its star. And a sport of its future.

His girlfriend lost control, hit a truck. Drazen was killed on impact. He was just 28 years old.

Miro Juric, a young basketball player from Drazen’s home town, told : "No grenade shook Šibenik as much as the news of your tragic death."

Another death in a country reeling from thousands of others.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: I actually remember. I was in my apartment. I got a phone call from my office and it said, “We think Drazen Petrovic has been killed.” I'm like, you've gotta be kidding me. So I called . Chuck Daly was the coach of the Nets at that time. I had Chuck's number, and I called him up and I said, “Chuck, please tell me this isn't true.” And he said, “Oh, I wish I could. It's just the worst day ever.” And I thought, “Man. Yep. It sure is.”

KENNY ANDERSON: I was like, wow. I just, I froze for a minute. And I couldn't believe it. Just was very shocking, very tough.

The Dream Team changed the game of basketball and the world, ushering in a new era of American cultural dominance. Suddenly you had villagers in the most remote parts of wearing Michael Jordan T-shirts, that is, if they weren’t making them in sweat factories in China for 25 cents an hour.

Globalism had arrived, and America, at least for now, had been declared the winner. We’d won the Cold War, baby, without ever having to grapple with what it meant.

As for Drazen’s legacy, well, we see it everyday in the NBA.

ARCHIVAL ANNOUNCER: “Jokic has a chance to tie it. Oh! Jokic hits it” ANNOUNCER: “Luka magic is back, tossed in the circus shot!”

ZACH LOWE: And that's why when you talk to a lot of European players and coaches who both before Drazen came and after, consider him, maybe he's not the best European player ever, I

18 probably think Dirk Nowitzski is, but to them, he's the most important because he was the one who busted that stereotype.

Before Drazen, players came from places like Wilmington, North Carolina; French Lick, Indiana; and the South Side of Chicago. These days, well...

ARCHIVAL MONTAGE OF NBA HIGHLIGHT IN SEVERAL LANGUAGES

The wave started slowly at first, with guys like Drazen, Sabonis. Then you saw people like Manu Ginobili, an Argentinian lefty who combined a silky smooth jumper with the craftiness to get to the hoop and slam it down hard on anyone who dared get in his way.

Now, cut to 2020. There was a pandemic raging around the world, and the NBA had been forced to play their playoffs in a bubble on the Disney World campus in Florida.

It was against this backdrop that a series of dinners took place, the first one on the outdoor patio at the Three Bridges Bar & Grill at Villa del Lago.

Present were some of the best players in the league. Players like Jusuf Nurkić and Boban Marjanović. Goran Dragić and Vlatko Čančar. Nikola Vučević, Ivica Zubac and Mario Hezonja. And, yes, two potential future NBA MVPs in Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić.

No one was worried during these dinners about who was from Serbia or who was Slovenian, Croatian or Bosnian. These were the Balkans boys, all from countries that were once a part of a forgotten country Yugoslavia. And the thing that they wanted to talk about, the thing that brought them all together, was basketball.

You want to talk about a Dream Team, you could do a lot worse.

19 CREDITS

ADAM McKAY, host and executive producer

JODY AVIRGAN, executive producer and series editor

RAGHU MANAVALAN, senior producer

BRIAN STEELE, producer

SHANE MCKEON, assistant producer

KATHERINE SHOEMAKER, booking help

JASON HEILIG, archival research

WILL TAVLIN, fact-checking

ALISON SCHARY, legal

Mixing and sound design by JOANNA KATCHER at NICE MANNERS

Music composition by BEACON STREET

NUNA CHARAFEDDINE, production manager

HARRY NELSON, executive producer at Hyperobject

LAURA MAYER, executive producer at Three Uncanny Four

Special thanks to Hyperobject’s STACI ROBERTS-STEELE

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