Basketball legend Aleksandar Djordjevic spoke about his beginnings and how he initially got into the sport in a recent extensive interview for the Spanish Relevo.
Djordjevic began by addressing the question of whether his father pushed him to play for Crvena Zvezda.
“Not at all. My choice was free. I always chose things in life, I chose my path. The key moment was from my teenage years. I was crazy and loved to go out with friends. One day, my parents sat down with me, and we discussed some things.
They told me to choose – one or the other. I grew up watching Partizan like any other fan in the stands. I remember numerous great players. I played basketball with friends until late at night. We used the street lights around us, as otherwise, we couldn’t see anything. That’s life, and it was beautiful,” said Djordjevic.
The most successful coach of Serbia in the last 10 years then described another interesting anecdote.
“The reason why I wanted to become a basketball player… I was nine or ten years old, and I was looking at a photo of my father in the album. There was a picture of him barefoot, with black and white bandages. There was an article in the newspapers that read, ‘Djordjevic was the best player of the tournament in Italy.’ Eight teams played – Gorica, Padova, Venezia, and Radnicki Belgrade, among others. He played barefoot, on concrete. He wore a jersey with the number ‘7,’ and I asked him why he played barefoot. He told me he had a previous motorcycle accident, and the shoes hurt him a lot.
For him, it was an opportunity to get outside, to see the world, to buy something. I wanted to do more than that, to be the MVP while playing barefoot on concrete. Months later, we watched together the FIBA World Cup in Manila, where Yugoslavia won the gold. That’s when I told him that I wanted to be a basketball player who wins world championships. Those are my two biggest motivations to become a basketball player,” concluded Djordjevic.