Dusan Ivkovic, retired for five years, died this Thursday in Belgrade at the age of 77, as reported by the Serbian basketball federation. The institution highlights him as “one of the best coaches in the history of world basketball” and they do not move away, since his honors on a continental and universal level it is at the height of the best. Ivkovic spent up to 38 years training in some of the best European benches and was also the coach of Yugoslavia before and after the separation and, later, of Serbia.
He triumphed wherever he went and in the Euroleague he won before and after the turn of the century, which also led to a change in the organization. He won the European Cup in 1997 and, already as Euroleague, in 2012. He did it with the same team, Olympiacos.
His last team was Efes, from which he left in 2016.
A year after his last foray onto a professional bench he was selected to enter the FIBA ​​Hall of Fame. His achievements at the national team level were very important because they also represented a cultural change. He started in the lower ranks of Yugoslavia, where he witnessed the explosion of Drazen Petrovic, and took the reins of the senior team in 1987. He won an Olympic silver in Seoul, two European championships (1989 and 1991) and a world title (1990). He returned after the dismemberment of the nation, in 1995, to get another EuroBasket. He also spent a few years with Serbia, with whom he almost reigned again on the continent (only avoided by Spain, which forced them to silver in 2009).
He has trained, in addition to those mentioned, CSKA, AEK, PAOK, Partizan, Vojvodina or Aris.
He is considered the teacher of another of the great coaches of recent years in Europe, Zeljko Obradovic, now back in Serbia.
Ivkovic was a relative of the scientist Nikola Tesla and, curiously, he was born on the same day that his grandmother Olga’s cousin died.