By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
As Stankovic himself says, “They say there are two kinds of coaches: the ones that start building a team with a reliable point guard and the ones that build the team around a quality center. Normally, the coaches coming from the “Yugoslav School” tend to fall in the first group, while American coaches tend to like the big man better. Myself, as a “proper Yugoslav”, I share the idea that in order for the team to work properly, you need a good playmaker who can also score when necessary.
Taking a walk down memory lane, I came up with this list of 10 point guards that I liked the most, but I also think that some others deserve to, at least, be mentioned. I am talking about Juan Antonio Corbalan, Mike D’Antoni, Aldo Ossola, Nacho Solozabal, Rato Tvrdic, Jure Zdovc, Rafa Jofresa, David Rivers, Elmer Bennett and Tyus Edney. However, memory is something relative, because it can be influenced by factors like having seen one player more times than another, as in my case. Some of these playmakers are still active, and some others are accomplished coaches or sport directors, but all of them played a big role in the history of European basketball.”
10. IVO DANEU (1937)
The ‘patriarch’ of Slovenian basketball. He was the great captain of Olimpija Ljubljana and the Yugoslav national team during the sixties, also a world champ in 1970. He formed a great duo on the national team with Radivoj Korac, an unforgettable scorer, but many of those points came from Daneu’s assists. He was a born leader, a fighter, an ideologist of the game and also a scorer if the team needed it. He was the great frustrated signing of Santiago Bernabeu, president of Real Madrid, after Daneu’s great performance at the Madrid Final Four in 1967 with Olimpija. His son Jaka played in Olimpija and his grandson Jure is also playing there right now.
9. JOAN ‘CHICHI’ CREUS (1956)
I can’t vouch for Creus being a better player than Solozabal or Corbalan, but since it’s a subjective choice, I choose him simply because of the length of his career and because of the fact that he managed to lead a team like TDK Manresa to the Spanish League title at more than 40 years old in 1998, and coming from sixth place in the league. He won two Spanish titles (the first with FC Barcelona in 1981), three Spanish King’s Cups (Barcelona 1981 and 1982 and Manresa 1996), the last of which he secured with a three-pointer on the buzzer over Barcelona, 94-92. He also won a silver medal with the Spanish national team in the 1983 EuroBasket.
8. ZORAN ‘MOKA’ SLAVNIC (1949)
He made his debut with the Yugoslav national team at 24 years old for the 1973 EuroBasket, and he would become the starting point guard in the team for the following 10 years. That team would go on to win three EuroBaskets, the World Championship, the Olympic gold and also an Olympic silver. He also formed a great duo with shooting guard Dragan Kicanovic. His game was fun, imaginative and unpredictable. He was also a Yugoslav champ with Crvena Zvezda and also a Spanish champ with Joventut. He also played in Italy, in Sibenik as a player-coach, where he gave a chance to some young kid named Drazen Petrovic at 15 years old. A great fighter, motivator and joker. A true champ.
7. PANAGIOTIS GIANNAKIS (1959)
Like in the cases of Daneu-Korac or Slavnic-Kicanovic, the name of Panagiotis Giannakis will forever be put together with that of Nikos Galis. They played together for Aris Thessaloniki and the Greek national team, but before being teammates they were opponents and protagonists of a historic game which Ionikos took from Aris by 114-113 with 73 points by Giannakis and 62 by Galis… At heart, Giannakis was a point guard for the team. He dished assists and also was the brains on court if others were scoring. But if points were lacking, he stepped up in that aspect, too. After three failed attempts with Aris, he finally won the EuroLeague with Panathinaikos in 1996.