You gave birth to him, but he belonged to all of us. When the legend died, two-meter guys cried and a candle burned in every church – You gave birth to him, but he belonged to all of us. When the legend died, two-meter guys cried and a candle was lit in every church

The most famous Croatian basketball player of all time and one of the best Europeans ever, would have turned sixty on Tuesday. Unfortunately, his life ended prematurely.

Angel and devil

Since the mid-1980s, you would not have found a single boy’s room in Šibenik and its wide surroundings without his poster. Finally, he put on a “men’s” basketball jersey for the first time at the age of thirteen.

He was a hero, a boy for whom nothing is impossible. Perhaps even 112 points in one league match, which he scored as a 20-year-old in the basket of Olimpija Ľublan. He aimed at it 60 times and in two out of three cases he was successful every time.

“In the team, we used to talk about anything – about music, about jokes, but Dražen always turned the conversation to basketball. For him, this game was everything,” recalls his teammate and later three-time NBA champion, Toni Kukoč.

According to Petrovič, he lived and breathed basketball.

“When he was still a little boy, he had the keys to the gym in Šibenik. He got up at six in the morning and went to train. He preferred to be alone. He spread out the chairs and dribbled around them.

At home in the kitchen, he hung himself on the door, he wanted to grow as much as possible. He was extremely tenacious, he was not satisfied with how good he was, he wanted to be even better,” says his mother Biserka.

And he was really amazing, he had no match on the Old Continent, and although you could only transfer from Yugoslavia after your 28th birthday, Petrovic went to Real Madrid when he was only 23. “Every problem in Yugoslavia can be solved with the right amount of money,” they let to be heard in Zagreb at that time.

In Spain, Petrovič lasted only one season, but even that was enough for one Spanish psychologist to declare about him: “Dražen is an angel in his private life, but a devil on the field.”

The “Devil” who decided to open the door to the famous NBA for Europeans. He was determined, fearless and although he had a very difficult time at first, he was never intimidated even by the biggest names in the overseas professional league.

His former teammates say it was common to see him smile. Especially when he was doing what he loved the most – playing basketball. He was open about the fact that he never did it for the money.

“With a million, five, ten or hundreds, you can still only have one lunch and one dinner a day,” he claimed.

In overseas statistics, his almost 44 percent three-point shooting success rate stands out to this day. Reggie Miller, the basketball legend, remembered Petrovič in one of his interviews in 2011.

First, he jokingly stated that he “considers himself the greatest shooter of all time, but there is one who was even better.”

The person he was talking about was Petrovic. His great rival who got under his skin. “He often spoke a foreign language that I didn’t understand, but his playing was flawless,” he added.

The first year in Portland was an ordeal for Petrovič, but after being traded to New Jersey, he revived. “One thing I learned in the NBA is to rely on myself. No one will push you forward,” he glossed over his suffering and subsequent success.

“But I’m not someone who just takes part. I know some people don’t like it, but they will have to put up with it. Europeans simply belong in the NBA,” he said about his pioneering role.

Petrovič was a leading figure throughout his career. In the club and in the national team. In Yugoslav colors, he won the titles of world and European champion, he also had two Olympic silver medals.

The second already with independent Croatia, which lost in the final in Barcelona 1992 against the American dream team.

Once brothers

Those were difficult years. War entered his life. She broke up relationships, for example with his best friend Vlade Divac. The first was a proud Croat, the second a proud Serb.

This sad story is documented in the film “Once brothers”. It illustrates how politics can destroy even the “indestructible”.

In 1990, the Yugoslavs triumphed at the world championship in Argentina. After the victorious final over the Soviet Union, there was a moment that changed everything – one of the fans broke into the board among the celebrating players with a Croatian flag.

Divac tore it from his hands and threw it away. “I told him that he doesn’t belong here because Yugoslavia won,” he explained years later.

However, the seemingly banal incident was inflated even more by the media in the Balkans, where tensions were rising at the time. “You build a friendship all your life, but it can be ruined in a second. That was also our case,” Divac admitted with a sad voice.

The regular phone calls of the two youngsters in the overseas NBA stopped overnight.

Can anyone blame them? Our relations often cannot withstand a different political opinion, they had to endure three wars in six Balkan republics, which claimed the lives of 150 thousand people and left more than three million – Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims – homeless.

However, the documentary ends with a touching visit. Divac – twenty years after the tragic war – comes to Zagreb to lay a flower on the grave of his former friend. So that the once “big brothers” could at least symbolically repair their damaged relationship.

Dozens of candles are still lit on Petrovič’s grave at the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb. For the people there, he is an unforgettable legend.

“Three months after my son’s death, I was at his grave when an elderly man with his grandson came up to me, lit a candle and said to me: Don’t be sad, you gave birth to him, but he belonged to all of us. Those words gave me enormous energy,” confessed Biserka Petrovičová.

To this day, many cannot cope with the death of her son. It was a huge blow, perhaps like the tragic departure of Pavel Demitra or Petr Dubovský for Slovácko.

And maybe something more, because for Croats, basketball was a religion. And Petrovic, a proud Croat, died moments after the declaration of independence, when the war was still raging in the country.

On that day, candles were lit in churches all over Croatia.

Red Golf

It is June 7, 1993, and the adored Balkan player, perhaps the best basketball player in Europe at the time, is getting into the car. His Croatian teammates are flying home to Zagreb from Wroclaw, but the Šibenik native prefers to ride with his new girlfriend, whom he met just a few weeks before.

It’s raining on the highway before Ingolstadt, the road is slippery, and the little red Volkswagen Golf has no chance to brake in front of the crossing truck. Out of the three-person crew of the car, only the unfastened star does not survive the crash.

On his left hand, he has a gold watch that “freezes” at the exact moment of impact. The short hand points to five, the long hand to twenty.

Drazen Petrovič, a twenty-eight-year-old basketball great, is dead…