NBA Stories: Sasha Djordjevic

ALEKSANDAR "SASHA' DJORDJEVIC

(This was also one of the first NBA trading cards I have got back when I was in high school)

     I started working on a game that is more appealing to me lately than any other game before: NBA 2K10. I always wanted to mod the 1995-1996 NBA season which was the last year Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson played together in Phoenix (the duo I loved to watch when I started following the NBA around 1992).

     While creating the draftees who entered the league at the end of 1996 because I want to play a fantasy association game but based on reality with realistic players, I stumbled upon a Serbian player I watched A LOT when I lived in Europe. Sasha Djordjevic was every European basketball teen's dream on T.V.!

     In 1996 Djordjevic accepted Portland's offer for the NBA minimum salary of $247,000 while Djordjevic's contract with Barcelona was worth $3.3 million for two and a half seasons(!). So he took a HUGE salary cut just to compete in the NBA. What happened next will explain why a coach by the name P.J. Carlesimo was chocked by the legendary NBA player Latrell Sprewell at the end of the next season when Sasha's coach worked for the Golden State Warriors...

     Djordjevic understood that he would be Portland's back-up point guard, because he believed he could do enough in 15 minutes per game to eventually command a starting position in the NBA. As it turned out, the Trail Blazers coach, P.J. Carlesimo, branded him a defensive liability and limited Djordjevic's NBA career to 61 minutes.

     "Obviously, the coach had a lot of problems," Djordjevic said. "He doesn't communicate with the players. It's not like figures on a chessboard, where you move the pieces saying the horse can do that, the queen, the king. "Now I'm feeling a little bit cheated. The people were so nice, but the coaches didn't talk to me. You would think they would talk to the players, especially the guy who is the point guard, who comes from another culture."

     Obviously, each NBA coach knows his team best. But it's just as obvious, watching Djordjevic in Atlanta, that he flourishes under pressures that would undo many NBA regulars. He said he is content now to be one of those great players that Americans will never know.

"There are a lot of players on the high level of Europe who can easily play in the NBA — easily," he said. "I'm not underestimating the NBA level. I am saying that you can find players on the same level in Europe. They just have to go to the right NBA team at the right spot and the right age. Me, I am 29. I just want to play."

     This story goes almost hand in hand with another Serb's career: Sasha Danilovic who played for a longer time in the NBA and much more successfully (he started as SG for Miami Heat). But Danilovic also left the NBA being disgusted by the team's organization and those who were in NBA's charge. Such a shame!

     Sasha Djordevic's PER GAME stats look like this:

G PTS TRB AST FG% FG3% FT%
8 3.1 0.6          0.6         50.0         71.4         80.0

     But his NBA stats PER 36 MINUTES look as good as any NBA star's: