Long past the fall of Yugoslavia, Nikola Vucevic and the NBA’s other Balkan Boys embrace each other as brothers.
“Once Brothers,” a documentary produced by ESPN 15 years ago, detailed the friendship that developed between Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic as they starred on Yugoslavia’s emerging national team in the late 1980s.
It also detailed how everything — their relationship, the team and the nation — fell apart.
Croatia, one of the nation’s six republics, declared its independence in 1991, leading to war with Serbia. While the latter republic was the aggressor, an official in the film is quoted as saying that it “wasn’t a black-and-white struggle,” that both sides were guilty of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
The national team sustained collateral damage, notably involving two of its biggest names. Petrovic, a Croat, and Divac, a Serb, had migrated to the NBA in 1989. But now they drifted apart. Nor was there ever an opportunity for a reconciliation; Petrovic, whose career was on the ascent with the then-New Jersey Nets, died in a car accident in June 1993, at age 28.
Today players from that part of the world form the NBA’s very backbone. The two prime examples are Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic, who hail from Serbia and Slovenia, respectively. Others, like Ivica Zubac (Croatia), Bogdan Bogdanovic (Serbia), Jonas Valanciunas (Lithuania) and ex-Sixer Dario Saric (Croatia), have fashioned solid careers. Still others, like Goran Dragic (Slovenia) and another ex-Sixer, Boban Marjanovic (Serbia), have recently moved on after long stays in the Association.
All of them were either very young when their native land was fractured by war, or born after it ended in 1995 (though wars in neighboring regions raged through 2001). And unlike their predecessors, they have been drawn together by their shared American experience. There are no longer any divisions or differences among them. Rather, they are part of a Balkan brotherhood.
Author Mike Singer, who in 2024 wrote an excellent Jokic biography entitled “Why So Serious?,” notes that after reaching the NBA, many of these players connected (and continue to connect) through various means. That they are regular participants in online video-game sessions, and were known for their rowdy gatherings at a restaurant in the Bubble in 2020. These relationships are unusually strong, unusually durable.
Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic, a Sixer so long ago that few remember anymore, has been right in the middle of all that. Born in Switzerland in 1990, he is of Montenegrin ancestry, and fast approaching his 35th birthday. He has no memory of the war, and even if he did, he wouldn’t want to discuss it.
“That’s a sad past,” he said as he sat in the Wells Fargo Center’s visiting locker room in mid-April, after the final game of his 14th regular season. “It’s a part of our history. War is never great. Nothing good comes out of it. But us as athletes, we never talk about it. We never mention it.”
Earlier that Sunday, before the Bulls’ 122-102 victory over the Sixers, Darko Dzeletovic hovered in the Chicago locker room. He is a native of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, but has lived in New York City for two decades, working as an engineer while also dabbling in sports media. When asked about Divac and Petrovic, he could only shake his head.
“Those guys grew up together, played together, but politics just put them apart,” he said. “They didn’t want to talk to one another. During the war, there was so much resentment. They would even say, ‘Why are you talking to this guy who’s on the opposite side?’”
No longer. Now, Vucevic said, there is “an automatic connection” among the Balkan Boys.
“I think that just makes it special, coming all the way from the Balkans to play here in the best league in the world,” he said. “There’s something unique about it.”
Vucevic has been here 18 years, after spending the early part of his life in Belgium, where his father, Boro, was amid a 24-year professional career, and then Montenegro, where his own career took root. He spent a year at a California prep school, then three at USC, before the Sixers made him the 16th pick of the 2011 draft.
He was consigned to rookie purgatory for a season, flitting in and out of Doug Collins’ rotation. Then the Sixers sent him to Orlando as part of the ill-fated four-team trade that brought Andrew Bynum to Philadelphia. Best thing that ever happened to Vucevic, who began churning out double-double seasons with regularity. This year, his fourth full season with the Bulls after eight-plus with the Magic, he checked in at 18.5 points and 10.1 rebounds a night. For his career, those respective norms are 17.2 and 10.5.
“I take a lot of pride,” he said, “in being consistent – doing what I do best on the court, trying to bring it every night.”
That was one of the things he tried to get across to Jokic when the two of them crossed paths for the first time after a game in Denver in 2015-16, Jokic’s rookie year. Jokic’s brothers arranged the meeting, believing it would be helpful for the younger man to pick Vucevic’s brain, given their regional ties and stylistic similarities.
“There was nothing special,” Vucevic said. “I think it was just kind of trying to figure out what he could do to make the best out of the NBA. … He figured it out.”
Yes, that is the consensus, given that Jokic has won three MVP awards and is on the fast track to the Hall of Fame. Vucevic said that in a sense he is surprised at the extent of Jokic’s success, while at the same time lauding the younger man’s on-court IQ, work ethic and drive.
“I’m very happy for him,” Vucevic said. “He’s a great guy. We’re very close.”
As are the rest of the Balkan Boys.
“I think that’s kind of just who we are as people,” Vucevic said. “We connect well with people that are close to us, similar to us.”
This comes as no surprise to those who have spent any time in their orbit. Consider, for example, Pete Lisicky, who played 11 seasons overseas (1998-2009) after starring at Penn State. Now a certified financial planner in Scottsdale, Ariz., he said in a phone interview that he had Balkan coaches or teammates every year he played. Soon after he sent an email listing all seven coaches and all 24 teammates who fell into that category, along with his memories of each.
He remembers Arte Grgurevic, with whom he played on a team in Switzerland, as “the Croatian (Charles) Barkley” – i.e., an undersized power forward who could hold his own against bigger bangers.
“He talked like the Terminator but was the kindest person,” Lisicky wrote, adding that Grgurevic “loved Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.”
A few years later, Lisicky played on another team in Switzerland with another Croatian, Davor Rimac. Rimac, part of a national championship team at the University of Arkansas in 1994, was in Lisicky’s estimation “one of the best shooters I have ever played with” – a considerable compliment, since Lisicky’s stock in trade was perimeter marksmanship.
Rimac, Lisicky added, was something of a computer whiz, who somehow managed to get him a copy of the original “Lord of the Rings” movie before it was released in theaters.
“You could see a banner running at the bottom,” Lisicky wrote, “that it was a digital copy of a leaked version given to an Academy Awards voting member.”
Then there was Gordan Firic, a Bosnian point guard with whom Lisicky played in Germany.
“The best passer, perhaps, I ever played with,” Lisicky wrote.
The two of them would often share meals, often share some Vranac, a Montenegrin red wine. And at times, Lisicky said, something would come over Firic, who had served in the army during the Balkans War.
“Gordan would kind of refer to his time in the army and how horrible it was,” Lisicky said. “You kind of saw under his mental makeup: He had issues.”
Generally, Lisicky found his Balkans teammates to be loving, giving people, that they were “cut from a similar cloth.” With few exceptions, he said, they considered each other “brats” (pronounced like the first syllable in the word “bratwurst”), the Croatian word for “brothers.” And they were more than willing to expand their circle, to include others in their meals and gatherings.
Time and again Lisicky would be invited to sit down and have a glass of Slivovitz, a Croatian plum brandy. And on one memorable occasion he attended a New Year’s Eve party hosted by his Balkan teammates. Meat was served in abundance. Lively music was played. Cigarette smoke swirled.
Lisicky came to appreciate them — how there might be language differences among them, but they really understood and embraced one another.
“You learn some of their history, you can see how they appreciate life, because they can see how bad it can be,” he said. “And you can understand why some of them were so intense — like, ‘Hey, this is my chance. My family didn’t have a chance. They got stuck there or got killed during the war.’ It’s an interesting part of the world. And all the stuff, I think they’re past it now.”
Flash forward to the visiting locker room in the Wells Fargo Center, back in April. To Vucevic, who talked about the love the Balkans Boys have for each other, and their native land.
“I’ve been here (18) years, and still miss home and still feel nostalgic about certain things,” he said. “It’s just natural. We’re very attached to our heritage — who we are, history and everything.”
But there is also an appreciation for the opportunity presented to them, and a desire to take full advantage of it. While Vucevic doesn’t aspire to a career reaching the otherworldly lengths achieved by his dad, he hopes to extend it a little while longer, perhaps beyond his Bulls contract, which is up in ‘25-26.
To that end, he has developed his own set of survival skills. When he was walking to the locker room before the game against the Sixers, he turned down the autograph hounds leaning over the railing in the arena’s lower stands, believing they just wanted to sell his signature online. And among the items sitting in his spot in the locker room were two Fiji waters and something called a Protein Puck.
Gotta get your body right. Gotta stay ready.
“Obviously I understand that I’m closer to the end than I am to the beginning,” he said. “But I’m at the point where I just really want to enjoy the most out of it and take it year by year and see where that takes me. I do believe I have some good years ahead of me.”
And his brothers – his brats – will continue to be there for him. To understand that time marches on and pages must be turned. And that they will always have a bond like no other.