Bozidar Maljkovic spoke in an interview with “AS” about his induction into the Hall of Fame of the Spanish Basketball Federation.
The celebrated coach shared various anecdotes from his time in Spain. The Serbian expert coached Barcelona, Real Madrid, Unicaja, and Baskonia. First, he talked about how much this recognition means to him.
“I would say that this is the most important recognition in my life. Since I retired from basketball in 2013, I have received many awards. I have been declared an honorary citizen of different cities. But when they informed me that I was entering the Spanish Basketball Hall of Fame, the satisfaction was maximum. It seems that Spanish basketball recognizes my ten years of daily work there.”
“I want to thank Barcelona, Real Madrid, Baskonia, and Unicaja, especially the people from Malaga. I think the foundations for the later successes we achieved with Sergio Scariolo were laid there. Personally, I am not a fan of such awards. Sometimes they have some politics, I don’t know. Spain is the first country that has rewarded me, confirming the many good moments I experienced there,” said the President of the Olympic Committee of Serbia.
He then shared an interesting anecdote. Maljkovic revealed that Toni Kukoc was very close to joining “Blaugrana” (Barcelona), but it quickly fell through.
“I had signed a contract with Kukoc. But due to a well-known story that I don’t want to repeat, it didn’t happen. Imagine how that Barcelona would have looked like with Kukoc. Recently, I was in Sarajevo. A film about Toni was shown there. It felt like Las Vegas, there were 3,500 people. I appear quite often in the film. It was my turn to speak, and I received an incredible applause that moved me. Then the film was premiered in Split. I entered the hall with Dino Radja’s mother, and the same thing happened to me. They applauded me for minutes,” emphasized the former Jugoplastika coach.