Drazen Petrovic was the Nowitzki before Nowitzki. Even Michael Jordan respected and feared him. On June 7, 1993, the best basketball player in Europe died far too early.
He was Dirk Nowitzki before Dirk Nowitzki. In a time when European basketball players were still considered soft, defensively weak, and too unstable for the NBA steel bath, a man set out to impressively dispel these prejudices: Drazen Petrovic.
Even a decade before Germany’s basketball legend conquered the USA by storm, Petrovic amazed the NBA with his genius. After a difficult start in Portland, he roused the New Jersey Nets from their anonymity.
All-Star Games, an MVP title, and even the Hall of Fame seemed to await the gifted scorer on the horizon, but all of that ended on that fateful June 7, 1993, on a highway near Munich.
The tragic story of a legend that is no longer ubiquitous outside the former Yugoslav republics, but never forgotten.
Phenomenon Petrovic: 112 points in one game
It was clear early on that Petrovic possessed a gifted talent.
After only two years in the junior teams of his hometown club Sibenka, he made it into the first team at the age of 15. In 1984, at the age of 20, he moved to Cibona Zagreb with an Olympic bronze medal in his luggage.
A year later, the guard led the team to the European Cup triumph with 36 points in the final against Real Madrid, and on October 5, 1985, he wrote history with an unbelievable 112 points in a game.
In the NBA, only Wilt Chamberlain has scored 100 points in a game.
The Portland Trail Blazers selected him in the 1986 draft at position 60, but Petrovic did not feel ready yet and signed with Real Madrid in 1988 for a reported four million dollars.
Player agent Jose Antonio Arizaga later recalled in the Spanish newspaper AS how he had to bribe various official bodies because at that time Yugoslavian players were only allowed to move abroad at the age of 28.
Difficult start in the NBA
After a year as the top scorer in the Spanish league, the “Mozart of Basketball” finally wanted to compete with the best players in the world and moved to Portland.
“Drazen and I became good friends immediately. We talked a lot about his family. I respected him immediately, also because he worked so hard. He was the first at training every day and the last to leave,” Hall-of-Famer Clyde Drexler said years later.
The NBA was just opening up to international players at the time, and the prejudices were considerable: Europeans were not athletic, too slow, and did not play defense. Accordingly, it was difficult for Petrovic at the beginning.
The Blazers saw him as a shooter, and behind Drexler or Danny Ainge, he only got an average of eleven minutes per game.
World Cup title and break with Divac
It was the most difficult time in the life of the Croatian folk hero, because after the 1990 World Cup title with Yugoslavia, there was a break with his best friend Vlade Divac (then L.A. Lakers).
The Balkan conflict was already smoldering, and during the celebration on the court, the Serbian Divac threw away a Croatian flag of a fan and thus became a Serbian idol and the Croatian hate figure.
Petrovic subsequently withdrew from his buddy – also because of the pressure in the Croatian homeland on the family. The outstanding documentary Once Brothers tells this story.
Petrovic took off with the Nets
Because his situation in Portland did not change, Petrovic finally demanded a trade and landed with the New Jersey Nets in January 1991 – in exchange for 36-year-old Walter Davis.
Suddenly the ice broke and the self-confidence was back. In his two and a half years, he kissed the Nets awake and quickly became a crowd favorite.
In his first full season, he averaged over 20 points and led the Nets with Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson to the playoffs for the first time since 1986.
“Petro” was in a way also Steph Curry before Steph Curry – his three-pointers electrified the masses.
Olympic duel with Jordan
At the 1992 Olympics, the young nation of Croatia with Toni Kukoc and Co. reached the final against the legendary Dream Team, mainly thanks to him.
Despite the defeat, Petrovic was the top scorer of the final and engaged in a duel with the greatest basketball player of all time: Michael Jordan.
The legend goes that trash-talk master Jordan said to him: “I’m going to shoot one in your face,” to which Petrovic replied: “Me too” – and did.
Similar to Jordan, the cool European was never at a loss for words and could back them up with actions. That’s why the GOAT respected him like hardly any other opponent. He loved and hated playing against Petrovic, as he later admitted.
“It was a thrill to play against him. He was never nervous and an immensely aggressive competitor. We had some great battles, unfortunately, there were far too few,” Jordan said when he received the Drazen Petrovic Trophy in Paris years ago.
Anyone who knows Jordan knows how rarely he speaks so positively about rivals.
Longtime Nowitzki coach raves
In his second year for the Nets, Petrovic got even better. He hit almost 45 percent of his three-pointers and was the eleventh-best scorer in the league with 22.3 points per game. Although he was strangely not an All-Star, he was voted into the All-NBA Third Team.
The only Europeans who also succeeded in doing this in the following ten years were Detlef Schrempf and Dirk Nowitzki.
“From his attitude and the urge to always want to improve, I see him on Nowitzki’s level,” said Nowitzki’s longtime coach Rick Carlisle once – then assistant with the Nets: “He was also the first to take shots far behind the three-point line, he would be perfect for today’s NBA.”
His three-point percentage for his career (43.7 percent) would be third all-time behind Steve Kerr and Hubert Davis.
Petrovic was on his way to becoming an NBA superstar, maybe his young Nets in the East could have even become a rival for Jordan’s Bulls, but all of this ended on June 7, 1993.
Tragic accident near Ingolstadt
On the way back from a qualification tournament for the 1993 European Championship, the Croatian team landed together in Frankfurt.
At the last minute, Petrovic decided to drive back home with his girlfriend Klara Szalantzy.
Szalantzy – now married to former DFB national team manager Oliver Bierhoff – drove on a rain-soaked highway near Ingolstadt and rear-ended an accidented truck.
She and the third passenger, Hilal Edebal, a Turkish basketball player, suffered serious injuries. The unbelted and sleeping Petrovic died at the scene of the accident – at the age of 28.
Petrovic’s grave in Zagreb immediately became a place of pilgrimage, Cibona named its arena after him, and the Nets never gave away his number again. Tennis player Goran Ivanisevic dedicated the triumph in Wimbledon 2001 to his friend.
In 2002 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 2007 into the FIBA Hall of Fame. Through his early death, Petrovic became a myth.
As influential for Europe as Jordan
His influence on the game is unbroken. In Europe, he shaped basketball like Jordan in the USA. He was the pioneer who opened the door to the NBA for Kukoc, Nowitzki, Peja Stojakovic and Co.
Ex-NBA star Goran Dragic wore number three for the Rockets and in the Slovenian national team because of him. “He is my idol. I started playing basketball because of him,” he emphasizes.”
Dario Saric’s father played with Petrovic in Sibenik and told his son stories about the legend and showed him videos.
“I think real basketball fans will never forget Drazen,” says his friend Divac. Nothing can be added to that.