By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
Croatia is set to host an Olympic Qualifying Tournament group and Bojan Bogdanovic is eager to help his national team punch in its Olympic Games ticket, FIBA relays. Tunisia and Brazil will be first round foes, while Germany, Russia and Mexico sit in the other group. One out of the six countries will make the trip to Tokyo.
“We were in warrior mode in 2016. We want to achieve the same thing this summer, too,” he mentioned recalling success in the 2016 Olympic Qualifying tournament, “The mentality has to be – win, win, win and not to overthink. We all know that every team that is coming to the (FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament) is going to battle for a spot in the Olympics, because every player dreams about competing on the Olympic stage. I mean, basketball in the Olympics is one of the most followed competition, and every player has memories from the Dream Team, Team USA, their own national team or the Olympic Games in general.”
“When I heard we were going to play in Split, I was so happy!” said Bogdanovic on the home-court advantage, “It’s a huge basketball city and it’s one of my favorite places in the whole country. Playing at home has to be a plus for us, we have to take advantage of this and show our country that we can win at home. The fans are already talking a lot about it, according to the feedback and information I got from my family and friends back in Croatia. We talk about it, too, between the players. Playing at home is a privilege, and we want to make the most out of it. It’s going to be great, and don’t want to and can’t disappoint them. We count on them to be our sixth man.”
“Tunisia are the best team from Africa, and they have been playing together for a while so they have a lot of experience,” the Utah Jazz star pointed out on Croatia’s upcoming opponent, “They are always in the main international competitions, like the FIBA Basketball World Cup and the Olympic Games, so that means that they can compete at the highest level.”
“Brazil has a lot of NBA players and guys that play in very good European teams,” he went on, “We all know about Varejao, Barbosa and Nene, but they have some very good young guys, such as Bruno Caboclo for example. Those two teams are pretty competitive and we can’t play those games thinking that we are better than them. We have to play every game as if it was a Final, as if our lives depended on it.”
“Oh man, I have so much good memories from the Rio Olympics!” he said looking back at 2016, “The atmosphere was unique, the people and the crowd were very good and noisy and the overall Olympic experience was very good. The Olympics are unique, and when you are an athlete and you get the chance to compete at this level, you want to shine and help your country shine. I think we did show a lot of great things during the tournament, and that we fell close from going to the Semi-Finals, which would have been fantastic because we could have fought for a medal. But we also learned a lot during this competition, and the young guys did gain experience very fast. We want to experience this kind of competition again, and we want this to happen this summer.”
“That generation kind of built Croatian basketball, showed that Croatia can shine at the international level. A small country like ours, competing at this level, being so successful – that was so amazing,” Bogdanovic replied to a question on the 1992 national team that claimed silver medals at Barcelona, “They created one of the best moments in the history of the country so far. Everybody knows about it. Everybody back home still talks about it. Some people (over the world) started learning about Croatia because of the basketball team, too, and very often, even in USA, I hear people talking to me about the 1992 Olympics and how well Croatia played.”