The following piece on Dražen Petrović originally published Feb. 8, 2022. Petrović died June 7, 1993, in an automobile accident. He was only 28 and preparing for his fifth season in the NBA. This piece was a part of The Athletic’s NBA 75 coverage, honoring the best players in NBA history during the league’s diamond anniversary. Minor edits have been made to account for the passage of time since the first publication.
When Dražen Petrović joined the Portland Trail Blazers in 1989, he already had several nicknames. Most were not subtle.
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In Europe, fans called him “Mozart,” a tribute to his artistry and flair. One Italian newspaper dubbed him “The Holy Terror from Zagreb.” Another said he was “the White Isiah Thomas.”
At times, he was “Petro.” In other moments, he was “Draz.” When he starred for Real Madrid, one of the powers of European basketball, he was “Perro Caliente,” the hot dog.
And then, there was the special moniker from Arvydas Sabonis, the great Lithuanian center and a chief rival on the Soviet national team: He once called Petrović “Clown.”
Petrović probably was the best offensive basketball player in the world outside the NBA, a 6-foot-5 guard with deep range, feathery touch and a proto-Euro step — the “Lawrence Welk move,” as legendary scout Marty Blake put it — but he also was a character, a fiery Croatian virtuoso who hoisted 3-pointers, flipped behind-the-back passes and drove opponents crazy.
In 1985, he scored 112 points in one game for Cibona Zagreb. In 1988, he led the former Yugoslavia to a silver medal at the Seoul Olympics. But when he arrived in the NBA, nobody was certain if it would work.
Drazen Petrovic scored 112 points in a single game in Cibona’s win over SMELT Olympia 158-77 (sportando) pic.twitter.com/U4kQxRy8mL
— Lic. Apuestas (@licapuestas) October 6, 2015
This is partly because “Mozart,” in this case, possessed a lackluster reputation on the defensive end. But it also was because there had never been a player like him, a foreign star who came of age outside the traditional feeder system of American college basketball. When Petrović joined the Blazers, he told reporters that he’d come to America to challenge himself, to prove he could play against the best in the world, to be the equivalent of a franchise player.
If he had to be the first of his kind, he wanted to make sure he was not the last.
Petrović in 1990 with the Portland Trail Blazers. (Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)Three decades later, it’s easy to forget how the perception of foreign basketball players has changed. Once upon a time, before Dirk and Pau, before the Greek Freak and Joker, before Peja and Kukoc and Manu and Yao and Luka and the other players who changed the NBA, there was a league that looked different, devoid of novel influences and larger talent pools and the Euro step.
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Consider, for instance, the early days. In the decades after Dr. James Naismith hung the first peach baskets, the sport of basketball began to spiderweb around the globe, debuting at the Summer Olympics in 1936 — where Naismith watched the Americans win gold on a muddy court in Berlin — and taking root all across Europe. The evolution continued in the decades after World War II, when the sport became a favorite behind the Iron Curtain.
But if the sport was growing around the globe, the NBA was not. Take a cursory glance at the first Europeans to play in the league, and you’ll find a familiar story: Credited with being the first European player in league history was the Italian-born Hank Biasatti, who grew up in Canada and debuted for the Toronto Huskies of the Basketball Association of America in 1946.
The second and third (Frido Frey and Charlie Hoefer) were German kids who immigrated to the United States and grew up in New York. The trend continued for decades; foreigners who broke through often were big men who arrived by way of Canada or a U.S. high school. It didn’t help, of course, that the players in eastern Europe often were walled off from the West, or that international players had to maintain amateur status to compete in the Olympics.
Consider, too, The Athletic’s NBA 75, included just four international players among its ranking of the league’s best players — and only two (No. 24 Giannis Antetokounmpo and No. 21 Dirk Nowitzki) who did not play in college first. It’s possible that Petrović would have been on this list, too, had he not died in a car crash in 1993, just as his career was taking off.
Just consider his path.
Petrović in 1991. (Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)How did the NBA go global? College basketball deserves an assist. It wasn’t until the late 1970s and early ’80s, when college coaches started mining talent overseas, that everything started to change. Guy Lewis found Hakeem Olajuwon in Nigeria and brought him to the University of Houston. Marv Harshman discovered a German foreign exchange student named Detlef Schrempf and recruited him to Washington.
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Around the same time, Digger Phelps, the coach at Notre Dame, used an old contact to recruit a guard from Yugoslavia. His name: Drazen Petrović.
He had grown up in Šibenik (in present-day Croatia), a city along the Adriatic coast. His father was a police officer, his mother was a librarian, and for most of his youth, his only exposure to the NBA had come, in part, through grainy clips on Italian television. Nevertheless, Petrović quickly took to the sport, following the lead of his older brother, Aleksandar, growing into the European version of a gym rat.
Petrović starred for the local club, debuted for the Yugoslavian national team — for whom he competed against American colleges on a tour in 1982 — then joined Cibona Zagreb in 1984, spurning Notre Dame along the way. When he helped Yugoslavia win a bronze medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics (played at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif.), he was already on the radar of American scouts and reporters.
As Petrović blossomed, the basketball world underneath him began to shift. In 1985, the Phoenix Suns took a chance on a big man from Bulgaria named Georgi Glouchkov, the “Balkan Banger” as he was known. It didn’t work out — Glouchkov was amiable if not that athletic — but perhaps the experiment planted a seed. There was talent elsewhere; scouts just had to search.
The same year Glouchkov returned to Europe, Blazers executive Bucky Buckwalter was formulating his vision. Inspired by his experiences in international basketball — he coached the Brazilian national team in 1975 — he saw foreign players as an underappreciated asset. On the day of the 1986 NBA Draft, he shocked the establishment by using two picks on Europeans. In the first round, Portland drafted Sabonis, the adroit giant from the Soviet Republic of Lithuania. In the third round, it took a flier on Petrović, scooping him up one spot in front of Minnesota center John Shasky.
Of course, there were still doubters. Future NBA coach Mike D’Antoni competed against him in Europe, held him to an off night and then pondered how he’d do against the best players in the world. Phelps, who had lost a top recruit, believed Petrović would have developed better in college.
There were questions about his defense and his John McEnroe demeanor. Perhaps the questions were valid. Maybe the skepticism was fair. But in the end, the doubters missed one thing: Yes, the European players would have to adjust to the NBA, but the league would also have to adapt to them.
Petrović’s first NBA season was in 1989. That fall, “Sports Illustrated” dubbed him one part of the so-called “Green Card Five,” a group of five Eastern Europeans who were making their NBA debuts. In addition to Petrović, they were, in alphabetical order:
- Vlade Divac of the Lakers, the Serbian center drafted in the first round
- Sarunas Marciulionis of the Warriors, a Lithuanian guard who specialized in the shifty Euro step
- Zarko Paspalj of the Spurs, a Serbian big man famous for his colorful quotes and smoking habit
- Alexander Volkov of the Hawks, a mainstay on the Soviet national team
Together they formed a vanguard of talent, each offering something different, the full spectrum of European basketball. In the case of Petrović, it just took a moment to show it. Playing for a Blazers team that would reach the 1990 NBA Finals, Petrović was buried on the bench. He averaged just 12.6 minutes per game as a rookie, scoring 7.6 points per game but shooting 46 percent from the 3-point arc. The lack of playing time gnawed at him. Frustration set in. It wasn’t until a midseason trade to New Jersey in 1991 that his career began to take off.
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Petrović averaged 20.6 points per game while hitting 44 percent of his 3-point shots during the 1991-92 regular season. The following season, his scoring average jumped to a career-high 22.3 points, helping the Nets to their first winning season in eight years. Reggie Miller called him the best shooter he’d ever played against.
Dražen Petrović pours in 40 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 steal against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference 1st round.
Nets 113, Cavaliers 120
April 23, 1992pic.twitter.com/74V6eJ9MEB
— Hoop History (@H00PHISTORY) December 4, 2021
On June 7, 1993, Petrović died in a crash on Germany’s Autobahn while returning from a commitment to the Croatian national team. His death sparked an immense outpouring of grief across Croatia, where Petrović was a national hero, a symbol of pride during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing civil war. It also rippled across Europe, where Petrović had changed basketball forever.
In just 290 regular-season games across four seasons, Petrović averaged 15.4 points on 50.6 percent shooting. His career 3-point percentage (43.7) ranks third in NBA history, according to Basketball Reference. His legacy also can be seen in the makeup of the league, as four of the last five MVP awards were won by players born in Europe.
Three decades later, the mantra of basketball’s Mozart remains universal, no matter where you’re from.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photo: Nathaniel S. Butler / Getty Images)
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