Mega’s captain Uros Plavsic spoke with Basketball Sphere about the upcoming season and his decision to return to Serbian basketball.
The 24-year-old center reflected on what he learned from Nikola Jokic, what it was like to play with Luguentz Dort and what impression the man who coached Kevin Durant and Kevin Punter left on him.
The younger selections of Mega, the Basketball League of Serbia (KLS) and engagement in Smederevo, then going to the USA for high school and staying at top college programs…
Ater all that, he came back to the domestic scene. That was the path of Mega’s new reinforcement, Uros Plavsic, who returned to the Belgrade club after spending time across the Atlantic, this time as the captain of an extremely talented team.
About returning to Mega
![](https://basketballsphere.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/uros-plavsic.jpg)
In the first term, he was mostly part of the junior team, but he had the opportunity to witness the development of Nikola Jokic, who would shine in those years and go to the NBA. Plavsic was a witness to the process of positioning the club as one of the European centers for the affirmation of young players, only to wear the colors of the same jersey a few years later, when the eyes of international scouts are already, as a rule, focused on the team for which it is now a daily routine to produce picks in the NBA draft.
Now Nikola Djurisic, Nikola Topic, Andrija Jelavic and others are on that path. A lot is expected from Topic, who is considered to be the next big thing in Serbian basketball. With one of the most talented experts on the bench, Marko Barac, this season Mega could aim for what is usually viewed with skepticism – player development and results at the same time. In the realization of the team’s ambitions in the coming period, Plavsic will play a big role, who at the beginning of the conversation with Basketball Sphere described how much the club has changed since 2016, when he was last part of Mega.
“The club has risen to a much higher level. Now there is also the ‘Mega Factory’ hall with a lot of content and people look at Mega differently. There was Jokic and many other good players beside him, who made great careers. As time went on, Mega grew, which can be seen from the results on the floor and the players they produced. Mega is still a springboard for young players, as I still see myself.” – said 24-year-old Plavsic, the oldest in the team.
What he learn from Jokic?
In contrast to the established custom of Mega launching talents in the USA, the captain of the Belgrade club had the opposite path. Hamilton Heights High School was his first destination after he left European soil in 2017. A year later, he became a part of Arizona State College, where he stayed for a relatively short time, to be followed by four years at the University of Tennessee. Before returning to Mega, he was part of the Summer NBA League in Atlanta Hawks jersey.
“In the USA, I finished my master’s degree, got an education and combined the beautiful and the useful. You never know when basketball is going to stop. After the Summer League with Atlanta, I didn’t secure an NBA contract, and people in Europe have no idea about me, because college basketball is not that well known. Mega is very famous, because of the talents it promotes every year and I saw myself in that story. I know it’s a healthy environment, I was there as a kid. It was decided to trust those people to lead me on the right path and there wasn’t much thinking about it.”
Plavsic had the opportunity to practice with the greatest talent that Mega has produced, who will win the NBA title with Denver this summer and then be named the most valuable player of the final series.
“We all wanted to be like Jokic. Especially me, who plays in the same position. A lot could be learned from him, which was useful to me in college. Those players in the USA don’t have that. They are more athletic than us. The basketball intelligence he has sets him apart.
He sees everything on the court, and plays as a playmaker in the body of the center. When I went there, they see one assist, reading screens, and some things that are details in the game, which are not taught there. They put them in the gym, prepare their technique, decide who will shoot, who will dribble and stick to it. Nikola is a complete player. We are witnessing it on the floor.”
About the first steps in the USA
Apart from Jokic’s basketball intelligence, which is very pronounced, especially when it comes to the organization of offense, there is an impression that there is not enough talk about some other things, that are equally good about the Serbian basketball player.
“It is huge. He uses the body in a very smart way. He is not overly athletically powerful, but all his teammates are looking to use him on the floor. This gives him even greater opportunities for both scoring and assists. Handoff situations, the movements he makes, blocking angles, when a player goes under, then he turns for a rescreen, whatever happens there… He is so smart and does it with ease that it is fascinating.” – said Plavsic.
The center will have a somewhat different role, than it was the case in the previous part of his career. Especially when it comes to the responsibility that comes with being a captain.
“We are a very young team. The average age is 19.9. They joke with me that at the age of 24 I came to ruin the average. Everyone has talent and with the work of the last two months, that talent has been taken to the next level. You can see the difference compared to the first day, how much stronger everyone is.
The professional staff and coaches have done an excellent job, so that talent turns into intelligence on the court, strength… The set of talent and ambitions is there, but with the team and the policy of the club, every next game is watched. We will use speed, youth and energy and I believe everything will be fine.”
Same high school as Shai
The American episode started from Hamilton Heights, the high school attended a year earlier by the future stars of Canadian basketball, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
“A very nice story. Something that meant a lot to me as a stepping stone to the USA. If I had gone straight to college, it would have been more difficult. I didn’t speak English when I left, so that experience helped me. Everyone then looked at it as something big, because they made a top result the year before. And we had a very good team. My roommate was Samson Ruzhentsev, a former player of Mega, who is in CSKA Moscow now.
I lived with the head coach’s family, with his wife and two small children. If they weren’t there, it would be very difficult for me. It is not high school at all, as we are presented with high school in the USA. It was a Christian, private, small basketball academy, where there were two basketball teams – one male, one female and about twenty international students and 40-50 local people. A small environment, pleasant, like a big family.”
,,When I saw Dort, I thought he is a NFL player”
![Luguentz Dort](https://basketballsphere.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Luguentz-Dort.jpg)
After that, there was a stint at Arizona State, but not everything was as he expected.
“I was a ‘redshirt’, which with them means you take a break for one season, you prepare. When I came there, there was one story, one promise, which was not fulfilled. As a rookie, I didn’t know what that ‘redshirt’ meant. Luckily, I had the Serbian assistant coach, Drazen Zlovaric, to talk to him about it. If I hadn’t dragged a fitness trainer there by the sleeve, if I had worked extra, they would have forgotten I was there.”
Wherever he goes, Plavsic cannot avoid Canadian NBA basketball players. This time he had the opportunity to see for himself how Luguentz Dort, now Oklahoma City Thunder player and one of the best defenders in the world, was developing.
“Great guy, great player. When I came, when I saw him, I thought he was an American football player, not a basketball player. The way it looks, the physical preparation… Up until that moment, I had never seen anyone play defense like that.
It was a nightmare for every point guard we played against. We were freshmen, socializing was great. We lived room to room in the home. Even today, we sometimes hear from each other. He made a huge success. He fit in perfectly in Oklahoma, in the last year he is starting to score more and more.”
Captain of Mega further explained why Dort progressed offensively only in the NBA.
“He was exclusively a defender back then. He mainly focused on runs. I won’t take anything away from him, but when you go to college, you can’t impose what you really are, because there is a coach who has been there for years, he has his own system.
Either you have to adapt to it or sit on the bench. People have been doing this job for decades and have so many fans that they don’t want to change anything for any player. Later in my college career I played the same offense and the same defense for four years. It’s just a little bit different in the offense and the finish.”
About cooperation with the legendary coach
Plavsic needed time to get used to such a way of playing.
“One line-up on the court plays one defense, the other another. If you don’t accept it in time, you’re on the bench. That was a problem for me. I wasn’t needed as a point guard there. I was needed to make a block, handoff, control the rebound in the game. If I got the ball in the low post, I was taught what to do, I had two or three moves, anything beyond that would be too much. In the support team, they would look at it as if I want to be above the team. When I realized all that, it opened up for me.”
Plavsic spent four years in Tennessee. He came to a very high-quality program, led by the legendary Rick Barnes. With Texas, he also played in the NCAA Final Four in 2003, and in 2007 he had the opportunity to coach Kevin Durant. He came to Tennessee in 2015, and from that moment Partizan player Kevin Punter, as well as the new FMP first team player Lamonte Turner, went through the said University. Before Plavsic donned the orange jersey, Grant Williams was the leader of a team that would finish the season with a 31-6 record, which would contribute to Barnes being crowned Coach of the Year.
“I didn’t think for a second. I was moving back closer to my grandmother, with whom I lived, and I was happy because everything is different on the east side, people are nicer. I also followed them during the year. And I prayed to God that they would call me.”
Mega’s player faced extremely demanding training, which benefited him in the future, when it comes to career advancement.
“Barnes is a Hall of Fame coach. He lives basketball. I have not encountered anything like that in my career. The training is over, he goes home and looks at it three more times. The smallest detail shows. It used to happen before a game that we would watch a film for five hours, that we had to take three breaks because the player fell asleep in the chair.
I’ve talked to him several times about why he hasn’t tried at the NBA level. He said he wanted to create players, not manage the players. The training sessions are abnormally hard, 10 times harder than the match, so it was easy for us.”
“Durant is the only one with such possibilities”
Plavsic touched on that and what makes Barnes special.
“Off the field, he is the best character you can meet. He would give anything for the players. He reads the Bible, finds something related to the player, and FaceTimes you. That’s the kind of relationship a player needs with a coach. At Arizona State, practice ends, the coach immediately goes home, the hall empties after five minutes. He has very good connections, he communicated with the teams, helped me before the draft workout in the NBA.”
It was under his leadership that Durant was named the Player of the Year in college basketball, after which he was selected second in the NBA Draft in the summer.
“We’re getting ready for the game, and he plays Kevin’s film from when he played in college. He showed us a lot of situations, where they lose 12-13 points with five or six minutes to go. When I don’t know what to do, Kevin comes and says to give him the ball, no action. Let everyone move’. The only player he coached to have such capabilities. That’s what he was telling us not to do, because not everyone can be Kevin Durant.”
Barnes, as stated by Plavsic, is very familiar with Serbian culture.
“He was coming here, he was in Belgrade for basketball clinics. He is in love with Belgrade, with our food. They once took him to the Kalemegdan terrace. He says ‘I eat and hear the lions, I see the zoo below me’. We have used the ‘Belgrade’ actions several times, but it is specific in that it would name the actions after players from the opposing team. And he knows that we are attacking him at that moment and again it is impossible to defend, no matter how perfectly he sets it up.”
About Summer League period
The American episode, at least for now, ended with the 24-year-old basketball player after participating in the Summer League, wearing the Atlanta Hawks jersey, just before signing for Mega.
“A beautiful experience. I didn’t expect it to happen. I did five or six practices before the draft and I knew I wasn’t going to get drafted. Atlanta was a huge bonus to work with. This year it was just work and I didn’t stop to prepare for the Summer League. I’m not complaining, it was very nice. Atlanta is a top organization.
It happened that I was looking at the ticket to get home and after 10 minutes I got a call that Atlanta wanted me. Igor Kokoskov was there, so that meant a lot to me. I was also with Karlo Matkovic, Filip Petrusev. A nice gathering. Something I would do again, if the opportunity arose next year.”
Plavsic and Mega now face a big challenge. To turn talent and knowledge into something tangible in the next season. That won’t be easy considering the competition in the ABA League.
“It all looks great to me. I saw the teams. They have more experience than us. They will look to take advantage of it. Our advantage is that we are younger and faster, we have a good rotation. That’s how we will win. When we get tired in the fourth quarter, we need to use all the smarts we have as a young team to bring those games to an end.
So that there is no fear against teams like Partizan and Crvena Zvezda. We showed that we can, when we played a close game against the black and whites in the Super Cup. In the next season, we will learn about each other, what are the weaknesses and qualities. It always emerges in the most difficult moments and that’s when the team grows the most, in our case, I believe, from game to game”, concluded Uros Plavsic in his interview with Basketball Sphere.