Born in Pirot (Serbia), Svetislav Pesic will turn 71 this August, while Montenegrin Dusko Ivanovic was born in Bijelo Polje in September 1957. He will turn 63 in less than three months. Pesic and Ivanovic are two old cats in European basketball who, this evening in Valencia, will play the strangest title in the history of the ACB. The coronavirus league. A final in a single match, without an audience, between Barça and Baskonia, two teams that, on both benches, will have two coaches who evoke images of basketball from the first decade of this century. Two coaches with notable points of contact in their careers, among them: Girona. Dusko Ivanovic was one of the big names in Palau Sacosta’s Valvi Girona, where Alfred Julbe took him on his first (very few more) experience as a player outside Split’s legendary Jugoplastika; and, already in Fontajau, the Montenegrin opened, of assistant of Quim Costa in a tandem impossible to sustain in the time, the one that later has been his long career like technician. On the other hand, Svetislav Pesic’s play was disheartening. But intense. The Serbian coach was only one season in Girona, the second of Akasvayu, already over 60 years old and with almost everything done in the world of basketball. At the time of his departure from Fontajau, Pesic left behind the only European title in the history of Girona basketball (the 2007 FIBA Cup) and the explosion of Marc Gasol as a differential player. That season, 2006/07, Akasvayu Girona was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the ACB league against a Barça coached by Dusko Ivanovic.
Today (20.00, Vamos), thirteen years after that quarter-final tie with Gasol, McDonald and Fucka on one side and Navarro, Trias or Lakovic on the other, Svetislav Pesic and Dusko Ivanovic will be looking for a title again. League. A Pesic, enjoying the limit of this extension in his career that began when a desperate Josep Maria Bartomeu went to look for him when everyone, including him, thought he had already retired from the tracks; and the other, Ivanovic, after Josean Querejeta recovered him last Christmas in what is his third stage at the Vitoria club.
Two days after another immense veteran Aito García Renesés won the German league on Sunday, coaching Alba Berlin at the age of 73, Pesic and Ivanovic are once again proving today that they are very stubborn. With their basketball ideas they go all the way. And they never get tired of it. “Everyone knows how Dusko Ivanovic’s teams play, without much tactics or philosophy, but with a direct basketball that makes them very dangerous,” Pesic said yesterday about Baskonia and Dusko Ivanovic. “Dusko’s philosophy doesn’t change much from year to year; every player knows his job and what the coach wants in attack and defense. It’s not easy to play against this type of basketball, which not many teams in Europe can do.
Ivanovic, a machine making points
If Pesic says that “everyone knows how Dusko’s teams play”, at the turn of the 80s and 90s of the last century everyone knew how the then escort scored. Dusko Ivanovic was the veteran counterpoint to that fabulous Split Jugoplastika by Dino Radja, Toni Kukoc and company. With two European Cups in his pocket, Ivanovic received permission to go and play abroad and Julbe was very adept at taking him to Palau. Valvi’s “cart” with Ivanovic cutting through the bottom until he ended up finding free throws of five or six meters (he threw very little of three points) was mythical and the escort became a type of scoring points and more points in a team where the experience of the starting five was endless with the now coach of Baskonia alongside Quim Costa, Josep Maria Margall, George Johnson and Matt White. Ivanovic was averaging 27 points per game when a herniated disc ended his season.
The following course, 91-92, Dusko Ivanovic would repeat to Valvi and make many points again, 21 per game, although then not all of Julbe’s attacks went beyond looking for his free kick. Balls had to be entered for a novice American pivot to play them in the half lap. It was Darryl Middleton. The following summer Ivanovic did not continue in Girona, but despite growing up, he wanted to continue playing and spent a few games in Limoges until, in October, Julbe replayed him again to replace Johnny Moore, a northern baseman. American with an NBA resume that never adapted to either Valvi or Girona.
At the end of that season, at the age of 36, Dusko Ivanovic resisted stopping playing and went to the most modest Swiss league. And thirty points with Friborg … The following season he returned to Girona to become Quim Costa’s assistant in Fontajau. Ivanovic did not have, nor does he have, an assistant mentality and the tandem only lasted a year. In September 1995, Ivanovic returned to Switzerland to play as a player and, at the same time, as the first coach of Freiburg. It would not be long before he retired and, after changing Freiburg for the Swiss national team, his first great opportunity would come to the historic Limoges. With the French, Ivanovic won the Korac in 2000 (eliminating Casademont Girona in the semifinals) and the following summer, Querejeta entrusted him for the first time with the bench of the then Tau Vitoria. Then he arrived at Barça, Panathinaikós, Besiktas … and the usual returns to the Alava city.
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