By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
Dusan Ivkovic retired from coaching during the summer but his legacy on world basketball remains. And according to him this legacy could have been even bigger.
In a long interview that was aired today in the Greek public television the Serb coach spoke about his life and career and he didn’t hesitate to say that the Yugoslavian national team even without Croatian and Slovenian players would have beaten the Dream Team in the 1992 Olympics.
Ivkovic who was the last coach of the united Yugoslavia spoke in detail about the plans Serbia had, leading to the Olympics from which Serbia was banned: “If not for the war, I believe that we would have beaten the Dream Team. While other players were taking photos with the American, Jordan and the rest, we were working for that game, because I believe that we could have beat them”.
Of course, that team wouldn’t have in its roster some of the all time greats like Drazen Petrovic, Tony Kukoc and Dino Radja and the idea, but “Duda” Ivkovic believed that with players like Vlade Divac, Zarko Paspalj and Sasha Djordjevic he could have made history.
Of course, Ivkovic spoke also about Drazen Petrovic: “He was a great worker. If we started at 8 in the morning, he was there at 7.30 in order to be ready to learn and work. However I can’t pick one player as my favorite. They were all my children”.