Vlade Divac

• 1. Introduction

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  Vlade Divac arrived at the Los Angeles Lakers in 1989 speaking no English, carrying a style of play that most American fans had never seen from a seven-foot center. He could pass like a point guard. He could fake a fall with the subtlety of a stage actor. And within a single season, he had charmed his teammates and the public through sheer joviality, earning a spot on the NBA All-Rookie Team before anyone could quite explain how he had done it.

  But Divac was more than a clever player. He was one of the first Europeans to transfer to the NBA in the late 1980s, at a moment when the league was still almost entirely American in its makeup and sensibility. He would go on to play in more than a thousand NBA games, earning over $93 million in salary along the way. He would win gold medals on multiple continents, get traded for a teenage Kobe Bryant, and later sit in the front office of the Sacramento Kings, wrestling with draft decisions whose consequences would echo for years.

  He was named to the FIBA All-Time EuroStars Team. He was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame in August 2010. He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019. And all of that still leaves out the flag incident, the flopping controversy, the humanitarian foundation that raised millions for children in Serbia and Africa, and a business saga involving a French dairy giant, a bottled water brand, and a police investigation.

  How did a teenager from the small town of Prijepolje become one of the most consequential basketball figures of the last four decades? That is what this documentary will answer.

• 2. The Prodigy from Prijepolje

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  Divac began playing basketball in Prijepolje, the town in Yugoslavia where he was born on the 3rd of February 1968. His first club was KK Elan. His first professional team was Sloga from Kraljevo, and he announced himself immediately by scoring 27 points against Crvena zvezda.

  By the summer of 1986, at just 18 years old, he had become the top star of the Yugoslav basketball transfer season. KK Partizan in Belgrade won the bidding, signing him for DM 14,000.

  The Partizan of those years was genuinely extraordinary. The 1986-87 squad included Aleksandar Dordević, Žarko Paspalj, and Željko Obradović, with coach Duško Vujošević directing them. Together they won the Yugoslav League title that season. In the subsequent European Champions Cup, they reached the EuroLeague semifinal before losing to Maccabi Tel Aviv in Ghent.

  Divac's physical game was already unusual. Despite his height, he moved well, controlled the ball cleanly, and could shoot from mid-range. His signature moves included a shot at the top of the key and flip shots around the rim while facing away from the basket. He also played pranks on the court: at the 1989 EuroBasket, he lifted teammate Zoran Radović for a slam dunk, a moment that captured his playful personality.

  In just four professional seasons in Europe, only Arvydas Sabonis ranked above him among sought-after big men on the continent. That reputation was about to carry him across the Atlantic.

• 3. The European Pioneer

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  The Los Angeles Lakers drafted Divac in 1989, making him one of the first European players to arrive in the NBA and actually matter. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson served as his mentors during those early seasons, helping him adapt to the American game.

  His 1989-90 season earned him a place on the NBA All-Rookie First Team, with averages of 8.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game. Over the seasons that followed, his numbers climbed. By 1994-95, he was averaging 14.2 points and 10.8 rebounds per game.

  What made Divac historically significant was not just his individual production but his longevity and the company it placed him in. He finished his career as one of only seven players in NBA history to record at least 13,000 points, 9,000 rebounds, 3,000 assists, and 1,500 blocked shots. The others on that list are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Pau Gasol.

  He was also the first player born and trained outside the United States to play in more than 1,000 NBA games. By the end of his career, that total stood at 1,134. Only four other European-born players have since joined him in that club: Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Pau Gasol, and Boris Diaw.

  His fame during the Lakers years extended well beyond the basketball court. He appeared on The Arsenio Hall Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He filmed a commercial with teammates A.C. Green and Mychal Thompson for Schick razors in 1990. He turned up in American sitcoms, including Married... with Children and Coach. A Belgrade band called Deca Loših Muzičara wrote and released a song simply titled "Vlade Divac" to celebrate his move to the Lakers, and it became a hit.

• 4. The Art of the Fall

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  Veterans around the NBA had a word for what Divac did better than almost anyone: flopping. The technique involved going to the floor upon contact with an opposing player in order to draw a foul call from the officials.

  P.J. Brown, a veteran NBA forward, stated that Divac might have been the best of all time at it. Divac did not deny this. He said openly that he usually did it when he felt the officials had missed calls and owed him.

  A Sports Illustrated columnist named Ian Thomsen grouped Divac with Anderson Varejão and Manu Ginóbili as the players who had made flopping famous, describing their approach as analogous to diving in FIBA games.

  The practice eventually drew enough concern that the NBA instituted anti-flopping penalties in 2012. Divac supported the rule change. His stated view was that players after him were overdoing it.

  The flopping reputation was inseparable from the European style Divac helped introduce. The FIBA game rewarded physicality differently from the NBA game, and players trained in that environment brought their habits with them. Divac was simply more visible and more skilled at that particular habit than most. His willingness to discuss it publicly, without apology but also without defensiveness, was consistent with the personality that made him popular everywhere he played.

• 5. The Bryant Trade and Charlotte

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  On the 1st of July 1996, the Lakers traded Divac to the Charlotte Hornets for the draft rights to a teenager named Kobe Bryant. Divac initially considered retiring rather than moving to Charlotte.

  Instead, he stayed, built a close relationship with head coach Dave Cowens, and had one of the better seasons of his career. On the 12th of February 1997, he scored 18 points, grabbed 9 rebounds, and recorded a career-high 12 blocked shots in a 113-100 win over the New Jersey Nets. Alongside Glen Rice, Anthony Mason, and Muggsy Bogues, the Hornets won a franchise-record 54 regular season games that year. Divac averaged 18 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 2 blocks per game in the first-round playoff series against the New York Knicks.

  The following year, the Hornets beat the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the 1998 playoffs before losing to the defending champion Chicago Bulls in the conference semifinals.

  Divac's time in Charlotte showed what he could do as a primary option rather than a complementary piece. The franchise record wins and the playoff run stood as evidence that the trade had served Charlotte well, at least for those two seasons. What Charlotte could not have known was how Bryant would develop, and what the Lakers were building. The trade is now remembered almost entirely in that other direction.

• 6. Sacramento and the Yugoslav Family

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  On the 22nd of January 1999, Divac signed a six-year, $62.5 million contract with the Sacramento Kings. He was joining a team that would be rebuilt around him and a group of players who would eventually threaten the Lakers for Western Conference supremacy.

  The Kings roster during those years included Peja Stojaković, another Serbian, along with Hedo Türkoğlu, Chris Webber, and Mike Bibby. The team led the NBA in wins in 2001-02 and became a genuine championship contender. Divac was named an NBA All-Star in 2001.

  In 1998-99, his first shortened season with Sacramento, Divac ranked second on the team in scoring at 14.3 points per game, first in rebounds at 10.0 per game, which placed him tenth in the NBA, and second in assists at 4.3 per game. Those numbers showed how thoroughly he had taken over as the Kings' centerpiece.

  The 2002 Western Conference playoffs brought the Kings and the Lakers together in a seven-game series that remains one of the most disputed in recent memory. The Kings lost, controversially, and were denied the chance to play for a championship. Divac's career numbers in the 2002 playoffs that season were 13.5 points and 9.3 rebounds per game across 16 games.

  After six seasons in Sacramento, Divac returned to the Lakers on a two-year contract signed on the 20th of July 2004. Back problems limited him to 15 games over the season, and he averaged only 2.3 points and 2.1 rebounds per game. On the 14th of July 2005, at 37 years old, he announced his retirement, ending a 16-year NBA career and a 22-year professional career overall. The Kings retired his number 21 jersey on the 31st of March 2009.

• 7. Yugoslavia, a Flag, and a Broken Friendship

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  In the summer of 1986, right after signing with Partizan, Divac debuted for the senior Yugoslavia national team at the FIBA World Championship in Madrid, invited by head coach Krešimir Ćosić. The experience was immediately dramatic. With 45 seconds left in the semifinal against the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia led by nine points. The Soviets then scored two three-pointers in quick succession, cutting the gap to three. Yugoslavia tried to hold the ball, but Divac committed a double dribble with 14 seconds remaining. The Soviets got the ball, tied the score with another three-pointer, and won in overtime. Yugoslavia settled for bronze.

  The generation that came through that disappointment became something remarkable. They won gold at the 1987 FIBA Junior World Championship in Bormio, Italy, a squad that also featured Dino Rađa and Toni Kukoč. Before Yugoslavia broke apart, that generation claimed the EuroBasket titles in 1989 and 1991 and the FIBA World Championship in 1990 in Argentina, where they were led by Dražen Petrović.

  At the 1990 World Championship celebration, a fan carrying a Croatian flag ran onto the court. Divac took the flag from him. He has said he would have done the same with a Serbian flag, and that the man made a derogatory remark about Yugoslavia's flag before Divac acted. The incident landed at a moment when nationalist tensions were pulling Yugoslavia toward war, and the interpretations split along ethnic lines. Divac became a hero to Serbs and a villain to Croatians.

  The most painful consequence was personal. Petrović, whom Divac described as his best friend, was alienated by the flag incident and by the Yugoslav Wars that followed. The friendship did not recover before Petrović died in a car accident in 1993. Divac later discussed that rupture in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Once Brothers.

  Yugoslavia's national program continued through the conflict years. At EuroBasket 1995, when FR Yugoslavia won gold and Croatia won bronze, the Croatian team walked off the podium during the medal ceremony. In 2002, Divac was part of the Yugoslav team that won the FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis, beating Argentina in the final and defeating the United States along the way.

• 8. Front Office, Foundations, and Business Battles

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  In early March 2015, the Sacramento Kings hired Divac as vice president of basketball and franchise operations, brought in by principal owner Vivek Ranadivé. Within a month, a report from ESPN's Marc Stein described Divac as already regarded as the team's top basketball official by Ranadivé, even before any formal title change.

  On the 31st of August 2015, Divac was promoted to vice president of basketball operations and general manager. The job came with immediate turbulence. He navigated a public feud between head coach George Karl and center DeMarcus Cousins, in which Cousins called Karl a "snake" on Twitter and Divac reportedly summoned both to a private counseling session. He fired Karl in April 2016 after interviewing more than ten head coaching candidates, eventually hiring Dave Joerger to a four-year, $16 million deal.

  At the 2018 NBA draft, Divac and the Kings selected Marvin Bagley III with the second overall pick, passing on Luka Dončić, who became an MVP candidate within two years of entering the league. On the 14th of August 2020, Divac stepped down as general manager, following a season in which the Kings failed to qualify for the playoffs, their 14th consecutive year without a postseason appearance.

  Outside basketball, Divac's business ventures in Serbia met repeated resistance. A joint bid with Danone to acquire the beverage producer Knjaz Miloš was blocked by Serbia's Securities Commission. A separate attempt to take over the daily newspaper Večernje novosti was halted by the Serbian government despite the Supreme Court eventually ruling in Divac's favor. He registered as the owner of the bottled water brand Voda Voda in October 2007, but that transaction brought its own controversy when the previous owner publicly accused him of deceit.

  Divac's humanitarian record stands apart from all of this. He co-founded a charity called Group Seven with six Serbian basketball teammates, later renamed the Divac Children's Foundation, which worked with International Orthodox Christian Charities to raise around $500,000 for humanitarian assistance in Serbia from 1997 onward. His own foundation, led by his wife Snežana, provided over $2.5 million in humanitarian assistance between 1998 and 2007. In 2000, the NBA named him the recipient of the J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award for outstanding service and dedication to the community.

  In late 2007, Divac founded the organization "You Can Too," aimed at restoring abandoned homes in Serbian villages and in Africa to house homeless refugees. He organized a farewell from his playing career in September 2007 in Prijepolje and Belgrade, with the Belgrade event drawing 10,000 people outside the National Assembly building. The Belgrade band Deca Loših Muzičara, whose song about his Lakers move had been a hit in the early 1990s, finally met Divac at that event and performed the song with him.