Peja Stojaković

• 1. Introduction

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  Peja Stojaković once opened a game by scoring 20 consecutive points before any teammate had touched the ball. That moment, on the 14th of November 2006 against the Charlotte Bobcats, was the first time any player in NBA history had done it. It also came in a season when injuries would derail nearly everything else. But that snapshot captures something essential about Stojaković: when healthy, he was capable of performances that had no precedent.

  Predrag Stojaković was born on the 9th of June 1977 in Požega, in what was then SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia, into an ethnic Serb family. His full career touches three countries, five NBA franchises, two world gold medals, a retirement before he turned 35, and a standing as one of the greatest long-range shooters the game has ever produced. What follows is the story of how a teenager who fled a war ended up fourth on the all-time list of three-point field goals made.

• 2. War, Migration, and PAOK

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  The Stojaković family comes from the Papuk mountain region. When the Yugoslav wars began, the family fled to Belgrade, Serbia. Then, in 1993, at the age of 16, Stojaković moved alone to Thessaloniki, Greece, while his father stayed behind to fight in the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina against the Croatian Army. His father joined him in Thessaloniki in 1995.

  Stojaković had already played two seasons with Crvena zvezda, Red Star Belgrade, signing at age 15. In 39 games with Red Star he scored 113 points, a rate of 2.9 points per game, and picked up a FR Yugoslav national championship in the 1992-93 season. By the time he moved to Thessaloniki, he had played in what was functionally a war-era competition.

  A year after his arrival in Greece, he joined PAOK Thessaloniki. He helped the club win the 1994-95 Greek Cup and reached the final of the FIBA Saporta Cup in 1995-96. But his most memorable PAOK moment came in 1998, in the Greek League playoff semifinals against Olympiacos in Piraeus. Stojaković hit a last-second three-pointer to win the game 58-55, ending Olympiacos's five-year reign as Greek League champions. PAOK advanced to face Panathinaikos in the finals but lost the five-game series 3-2. One of the players guarding Stojaković closely in that series was Byron Scott, then wrapping up his playing career with Panathinaikos. Scott would later become Stojaković's head coach in New Orleans.

  In his final PAOK season, Stojaković averaged 23.9 points per game in the Greek League and 20.9 in the EuroLeague. He finished that EuroLeague season as the competition's top scorer. The Sacramento Kings had drafted him 14th overall in the 1996 NBA draft while he was still in Greece, and they waited.

• 3. Sacramento and the Shooter's Peak

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  The Kings signed Stojaković prior to the 1998-99 lockout-shortened season. He spent two years coming off the bench before his breakthrough in 2000-01, when he averaged 20.4 points and 5.8 rebounds and shot .400 from three-point range as a starter for the first time. He finished second in voting for the Most Improved Player Award that year.

  From there, the numbers climbed. In 2001-02, his three-point percentage reached .416 and his shooting percentage hit a career-high .484, while scoring went up to 21.2 points per game. In 2002-03, both of those seasons saw him win the Three-Point Contest at All-Star Weekend.

  The 2003-04 season was the summit. Stojaković scored 24.2 points per game, a career high, and finished second in the league in scoring. He led the entire NBA in free-throw percentage at .933 and in three-pointers made with 240 in a single season. He finished fourth in MVP voting and was named to the All-NBA Second Team. During the 2002-03 season, he had also become one of 24 athletes to sign their likeness to The LEGO Group for the LEGO Sports theme, historically notable for being the first LEGO minifigures with natural skin tones since 1978.

  The Kings reached the 2002 Western Conference Finals during his tenure. When Stojaković was traded to the Indiana Pacers on the 25th of January 2006 in exchange for Ron Artest, it ended an eight-year relationship with Sacramento. The Kings retired his number 16 on the 16th of December 2014.

• 4. New Orleans and the Franchise Record

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  During the 2006 offseason, Stojaković signed with the then-New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets for $64 million over five years. His 42-point game against the Charlotte Bobcats on the 14th of November 2006 gave him his career single-game high, and his opening 20-point run was unprecedented in NBA history.

  Injuries cut that strong start short. He played only 13 games in the 2006-07 season before missing the rest of the year. The following season told a different story. Starting all 77 games he played, Stojaković contributed to a Hornets team that won 56 games, a franchise record, and claimed their first division title. In the first two games of their second-round playoff series against the defending champion San Antonio Spurs, both Hornets wins, Stojaković averaged 23.5 points per game and shot 63.7% from three-point range. New Orleans pushed the Spurs to seven games before losing.

  The core of Chris Paul, Tyson Chandler, David West, and Stojaković kept the Hornets competitive for another season, but the trade of Chandler and a string of injuries pushed the franchise into a rebuild. Stojaković, at that point a well-paid veteran, no longer fit the plan.

• 5. Dallas and a Ring

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  On the 20th of November 2010, the Toronto Raptors acquired Stojaković along with Jerryd Bayless from New Orleans in exchange for Jarrett Jack, Marcus Banks, and David Andersen. He appeared in only two games. A left knee injury kept him out of 26, and on the 20th of January 2011 the Raptors released him.

  Four days later, on the 24th of January 2011, Stojaković signed with the Dallas Mavericks. He averaged 7.1 points per game during the Mavericks' playoff run that spring and scored more than 20 points in two different playoff games. Dallas won the NBA championship, giving Stojaković the ring that had eluded him through the long Sacramento years.

  On the 19th of December 2011, he announced his retirement, citing back and neck problems that had increasingly hindered his play. His career total of 1,760 three-point field goals ranked fourth all-time at the time of his retirement. His career free-throw percentage of .895 ranks fourth in NBA history, and his playoff free-throw percentage of .900 ranks ninth. He and Steve Nash were the only players in the league to rank in the top 25 in both free-throw percentage and three-point percentage in both the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons.

• 6. Yugoslavia's Golden Era

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  Stojaković's international career ran parallel to one of the great stretches in Yugoslav and Serbian basketball history. He earned a bronze medal at the 1999 FIBA EuroBasket, held in France, and competed at the 2000 Summer Olympics.

  Then came two gold medals in two years. At the 2001 FIBA EuroBasket, held in Turkey, the FR Yugoslavia national team won gold, and Stojaković was named the tournament's MVP. At the 2002 FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis, Indiana, Yugoslavia won gold again, and Stojaković was named to the All-Tournament Team alongside Manu Ginóbili, Dirk Nowitzki, Yao Ming, and New Zealand's Pero Cameron.

  He finished his national team career at EuroBasket 2003, where the newly constituted Serbia and Montenegro finished sixth. The Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport named him the Euroscar Basketball Player of the Year in 2001. Italian weekly sports magazine Superbasket named him Mister Europa Player of the Year in both 2001 and 2002. In 2021, HoopsHype placed him on its list of the 75 Greatest International Players Ever.

• 7. Life Beyond Playing

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  Stojaković acquired full Greek citizenship at 17 while playing for PAOK, and he served in the Hellenic Army as mandatory service for male Greek citizens. He speaks Greek and his Greek transliteration name is Prentragk Stogiakovits. He is married to Greek model Aleka Kamila. The couple has three children, including Andrej, born in 2004, who plays basketball for the University of Illinois Fighting Illini.

  In August 2015, Stojaković joined the Sacramento Kings' front office as director of player personnel and development. He was named assistant general manager in May 2018, a role that included oversight of the Stockton Kings, the team's NBA Development League affiliate. On the 15th of August 2020, the Kings announced he had stepped down from the assistant general manager position.

  He also runs the Peja Stojaković Children's Foundation, which works to improve the lives of children in Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. The Greek Basket League inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2022, the same year he was named to the All-Time NBA European Second Team.