By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
It’s not the first time Dusko Vujosevic returns to Partizan. As it was officially announced on Monday, it’s the third one. He stepped on in 1985-86 season, when he was just 27 years old as a rookie coach. And he lead the way to the national championship. One year later, he was the one who showed the way to the Champions’ Cup Final Four and in 1988 Partizan won with him, the Korac Cup.
Then, he chose to move to Spain, for CB Granada (1989-90), before he had his first come back (1990-91), to lead Partizan at the play offs finals. Τhat was when he said “yes” to Red Star’s offer, where he stayed only for one season (1991-92), since he was ready to try the Italian Championship, first with Brescia (1993-95), then with Pistoia (1995-97) and at the end with Scavolini Pesaro (1997-98). And when he thought it was time to get back home, he signed with Buducnost (1998-99) and then he moved again to Belgrade, to work with KK Radnicki (1999-2001).
At the summer of 2001, Predrag Danilovic and Vlade Divac became Partizan’s new leaders and their first decision was they needed the man who coached them when they were playing for Partizan, as their coach to take over this new project. So, Vujosevic said “yes” to the challenge which led to the most successful era of Partizan’s history – and among the best of Serbian’s basketball.
In the next nine years, the team got nine national championships, five Adriatic Leagues, three Radivoj Korac Cups (Serbian national cup) and they got to Euroleague Final Four in 2010. It was one of the biggest sensations in Euroleague’s history and that’s why his colleagues chose Vujosevic to be “the best coach of the season”.
CSKA Moscow gave him the offer of his life and he could not do otherwise, than accept it, with Vlada Jovanovic being his successor on Partizan’s bench. Dule’s assistant coach, led the team for the next two years and during this period of time, they all cheered for getting five trophies, but after Vujosevic’s one year as the president of SD Partizan (the full sports club, not just the basketball team), they all felt it was the right time to get together again. After all Vujosevic is the coach who associated his name with the best years of Partizan in recent history and his former assistant will try to do the best he can, specially in next season’s Euroleague qualification round, as the head coach of BC Donetsk.
As for Vujosevic, he will try again to build a new, young team and that’s why 18 years old center Nikola Milutinov in leaving Hemofarm and he will be a player of Partizan from next season.