How do you measure the legacy of a legend? Zeljko Obradovic resigned a couple of weeks ago as coach of Partizan Belgrade and his departure has left a void impossible to fill in European basketball. There is a before and after Obradovic both for what he has earned and for what he has taught. If the myth is told at face value, no one has a similar track record, crowned by nine European Cups: Partizán 1992, Joventut 94, Real Madrid 95, Panathinaikos 2000, 2002, 2007, 2009 and 2011, and Fenerbahçe 2017. In perspective, the next step is occupied by four coaches (Gomelsky, Ferrándiz, Maljkovic and Messina) with four crowns each. And if eternity is judged by its influence on the game and on subsequent generations, the wise old man does not allow comparison there either. At 65 years old, after 34 years on the board, Obradovic has created a school as a coach of coaches. He himself estimates that 150 players who have passed through his hands have become coaches “at all levels.”
The list includes illustrious figures such as Pablo Laso, Sarunas Jasikevicius, Aleksander Djordjevic, Vassilis Spanoulis, Jaka Lakovic, Sasa Obradovic, Mike Batiste… In all of them you can see a part of the Obradovic seal: his passion for the game, the obsessive knowledge that prevented him from sleeping imagining the questions that his players would ask him and whose answers he needed to know to gain authority, that volcanic character, loyalty to his word, the close treatment in intimacy… A genius with many faces.
Curiously, a common thread unites many of those students that he has left behind as descendants. Almost all of them were point guards, the position that Obradovic played on the court in his playing days and that later on the wing he considered the cornerstone of his scheme. Laso, Jasikevicius, Spanoluis, Djordjevic, Lakovic… From base to base, from coach to coach, a special complicity to transmit wisdom. One of the exceptions is Batiste, the American power forward who spent nine years at Panathinaikos and who is now an assistant with the Toronto Raptors after holding that position in Brooklyn, Charlotte, Orlando, Washington and Houston. Obradovic’s professorship has also reached the NBA.
“He was the first one to say: ‘Pablito will be a coach,’” remembers today Pablo Laso, a player under the professor’s orders at Real Madrid between 1995 and 1997. Obradovic was then already a benchmark who had won the European Cup with three different teams (Partizán, Joventut and Madrid) in his first four seasons as coach. With that track record under his arm, his methods were not in dispute.
“When the player knows that he is going to be coached by Zeljko, he is more open-minded because he is a reputed coach. The influence he has on a player interested in knowing and learning is very great because he transmits passion, desire and desire in everything, from preparing a training session to a final, why this or that is done… He was the first one who told me alone: ‘Pablo, when you train, because you will be a great coach, you will do what you want, but now I am the one in charge.’ He has always had a vision. ahead of its time,” analyzes Laso, one of his most outstanding disciples, Euroleague champion in 2015 and 2018 with the white team and many times in front of the maestro on the wing in European competition.
“As a coach, what I have tried to repeat the most about him is knowing how to value each player for what he can do well and what the team can give. He could value both that you played a good defense and that you scored 45 points. The important thing was the job well done by each one and he knew how to convey that importance,” adds Laso, and admits that “special connection with the point guards”: “He was very good in that position and he valued how those players were capable of being good themselves and making others and the team better. His legacy will always last. If Zeljko was a reference 20 years ago, he will continue to be so in another 20. Obradovic will be a coach even if he does not coach.”
The Slovenian Jaka Lakovic is also part of the heirs. Between 2002 and 2006 he wore the green shirt of Panathinaikos and in his last year in Athens he also coincided with Spanoulis. His career as a coach has led him to the bench of Bilbao Basket, Ratiopharm Ulm and, since 2022, Gran Canaria, in addition to being an assistant at Joventut and the Slovenia national team. Lakovic does not forget those lessons. “When I met Obradovic it was my first experience outside my country. I arrived as Novo Mesto’s top scorer and with him I realized that I had no idea about basketball. Zeljko reset me, he began to really train me in the game, he made me ask myself the reason for each play or movement. I had that demand especially with the point guards because he is the player who must worry about how the team works and was a basic piece in their system. Thanks to him I learned to be a true professional and everything what it takes to be successful at the highest level. His day-to-day ambition, his love for basketball, infected me, I started to see the game in a different way, I ended up seeing it like him and I was already sold. It was not only his idea of basketball, but of life. Even though it seems not on TV, he is always by his players, he protects them as if they were his children. Their relationship is wonderful. Your learning? “As a coach I have tried to inherit his level of demand and the importance of detail. And how to behave off the court. No matter how much he has won, Zeljko has never stopped being a normal person. His legacy is enormous. No one can achieve his greatness.”
Obradovic is gone, or so it seems. His historic career began at Partizan and at home he has come full circle. No one knows if he will train again, but no one disputes the great father’s legacy.
