NBA 2019/2020 - North remembers

[delgado]

Real-life problems, Miki

Odgledao sam snimak ujutru bez gledanja rez, juce sam proveo cela 24h u krevetu 

 

  Nego krivo mi unija, prvo mu izbacimo Lilarda i Mela, sad Hardena za koga misli da je bolji od Kinga, al' dobro uvek moze da se uhvati za krilaticu 'Kosarka je igra koju mnogi igraju, a Kawhi na kraju pobedjuje". 

[Miki28 Teoljub]

1 minute ago, delgado said:

Real-life problems, Miki

Odgledao sam snimak ujutru bez gledanja rez, juce sam proveo cela 24h u krevetu 

 

  Nego krivo mi unija, prvo mu izbacimo Lilarda i Mela, sad Hardena za koga misli da je bolji od Kinga, al' dobro uvek moze da se uhvati za krilaticu 'Kosarka je igra koju mnogi igraju, a Kawhi na kraju pobedjuje". 

Hoces da kazes da mu ponestaje igraca?

Hoces da ga stavis na muku i da navija za Bostan?

[delgado]

Naci ce nekog keca u rukavu tipa Smart ili preposteni trener Boston Stivensa ako bas dotle dodje

[Miki28 Teoljub]

Samo da se dodje do tog duela pa lako cemo😀

 

Vcrs Jokic i druzina uzimaju game 5

[Barkley#34]

19 minutes ago, delgado said:

al' dobro uvek moze da se uhvati za

Edited September 11, 2020 by Barkley#34

[MC Thunder 2]

1 hour ago, Miki28 said:

 

Daj te Klipane pa da se odluci sampion😀

Nadam se da kontas to vise nije onaj istok. Majami kako igra (pa i Boston), uopste ja ne bih bio toliko izricit kao ti da ce finale Zapada odluciti sampiona.

[didžej hel]

1 hour ago, delgado said:

 Nego krivo mi unija, prvo mu izbacimo Lilarda i Mela, sad Hardena za koga misli da je bolji od Kinga, al' dobro uvek moze da se uhvati za krilaticu 'Kosarka je igra koju mnogi igraju, a Kawhi na kraju pobedjuje". 

 

ostaju jos kawhi i durant iza mikelea, tako da je sve okej

[Luchifer89]

Ima dobrije novinara i preko bare

 

Ako Miller probije Radmana, dobijaju lagano

[Zvezdinho]

55 minutes ago, Miki28 said:

Samo da se dodje do tog duela pa lako cemo😀

 

Vcrs Jokic i druzina uzimaju game 5

 

https://images2.imagebam.com/bb/bd/a7/33cf021353971248.jpg

[MrTwister]

Evo jedan clanak na engleskom o Balkan Boys momcima i pricama iza onih slika u bubbleu, courtesy of The Athletic 
 

Spoiler

On Aug. 26, the night that the NBA shut down after the Milwaukee Bucks’ protest, laughter and singing echoed across Lago Dorado, the lake in the middle of Disney’s Coronado Springs resort.
 

Amid the uncertainty of the season’s resumption following a tense players-led meeting, a group of players — the Balkan Boys, as they later called themselves — went to dinner on the outdoor patio at the Three Bridges Bar & Grill at Villa del Lago around 8 p.m.

“It was a crazy night full of emotions,” the Heat’s Goran Dragić told The Athletic. “We didn’t know how it was gonna turn the next day.”

The dinner featured players from several Balkan countries: Serbia (Nikola Jokić and Boban Marjanović), Slovenia (Luka Dončić, Dragić and Vlatko Čančar) and Montenegro (Nikola Vučević).
 

Ivica Zubac and Mario Hezonja (Croatia) and Jusuf Nurkić (Bosnia and Herzegovina) weren’t there the first night, but they joined the group the next day for brunch and then two days later for a second dinner.

 

On that first night, the group longed for familiarity and comfort — and a little bit of fun.
 

Dinner turned into drinks. Drinks turned into playing music from their phones while locking arms and belting Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian songs, including “Slavija” by Džej and “Ne Moze Nam Niko Nista” by Mitar Miric, seemingly every few minutes.
 

They weren’t the only players unwinding by going out and eating and drinking in the bubble that night, but they were certainly the loudest.

“We transformed the restaurant to a club,” Dragić said.
 

With no ćevapi (a popular Balkan dish of grilled minced meat, often made with beef or lamb) or rakija shots available, the group settled for sliders and rounds of Stellas.
 

The natives of the former Yugoslavia, clad in T-shirts, basketball shorts and sneakers and slides, conversed in Serbian and Croatian, discussing life in the bubble, family updates amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the state of the basketball teams and leagues from their respective countries.

Most of all, though, there was playful shouting and jokes.

The quick-witted banter was led by Jokić and Marjanović, the two entertainers of the rowdy bunch.

“Jokić is a jokester,” Zubac told The Athletic. “He’s the one always making jokes. Boban is always making jokes, too. Pretty much everyone is like that, but they’re the most. They’re always trying to make some jokes about other guys.”

The ribbing included Jokić and Marjanović roasting each other.

The Serbian centers, who grew up roughly 250 miles apart and spend months in the offseason back home, have developed a buddy-cop-like chemistry through their years of friendship.

“Jokić and Bobi, they are the two funniest dudes,” Dragić said. “Especially because they basically tease each other most of the time. They go back and forth. We were just laughing all night.

“I even told (Marjanović), ‘Bobi, I know what you’re gonna do after the career. You’re gonna work on TV, for sure.’”

 

Meanwhile, Dončić, the youngest member of the group at just 21 years old, is on the other end of the personality spectrum.

The Mavericks star is reserved in nature. But with a group he’s more familiar with, he eventually opens up. Like his game, Dončić’s barbs are efficient.

“Luka is calm,” Dragić said. “He’s calm. He’s a little bit quiet. But he would listen and then he would just shoot one, and then everybody would laugh.”

The group stayed out until 2 a.m., singing and drinking for nearly six hours.

“I heard they were out pretty late,” Zubac said.
 

The next morning, the players attended the meeting to vote on the fate of the season. After it was determined that the playoffs would resume, the group coordinated a brunch in its group text, adding Zubac, Nurkić and Hezonja to the mix.

At brunch, they picked up where they left off from the previous night with loud conversations and music, though the scene was tamed down given the daytime setting.

At a nearby table sat Portland Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts, who was game-planning for Game 5 against the Los Angeles Lakers. Nurkić, spotting his coach, asked him to take a group photo.

With a photo tweet and a creative caption from Nurkić, the Balkan Boys nickname was born.

“I like it,” Zubac said of the nickname. “I hadn’t heard before, but it’s cool. We’re all good friends and we’re all from the Balkans, so I don’t see a problem with it.”

Dragić, who posted the first photo of the group from the first night but hadn’t thought of a nickname, also approved.

“I don’t know if a lot of people understand that,” Dragić said. “But we know what it means.”

Other Balkan Boys in the NBA include Bojan Bogdanović (Croatia), Bogdan Bogdanović (Serbia), Dario Šarić (Croatia), Nemanja Bjelica (Serbia), Dzanan Musa (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Luka Šamanić (Croatia), Alen Smailagić (Serbia), Marko Gudurić (Serbia) and Ante Žižić (Croatia). Bojan Bogdanović, Bogdan Bogdanović, Šarić and Bjelica are especially close with the Orlando group.
 

Up until that point, the Balkan Boys hadn’t been able to hang out much at Disney World, and certainly not in this large of a group. Each player was on a different schedule with the every-other-day nature of the bubble’s seeding games and playoffs.

Zubac has endured a unique bubble experience in the playoffs, facing Dončić and Marjanović in the first round and Jokić in the conference semifinals. The Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas Mavericks were still in the middle of their series when the NBA’s Orlando stoppage happened. The trio avoided trash-talking or discussing the matchup altogether at their gatherings.

“It was normal,” Zubac said. “We didn’t talk about it. … We just kept it like nothing was happening.”

During the season, the group doesn’t communicate much with the grind of the 82-game schedule and playoffs — and almost certainly never in a group of more than a few of them.

But whenever one is in the other’s city, they will reach out to go to dinner or hang out at each other’s places.

“We speak more like only when I go play a team that has one of those guys on,” Zubac said. “I hit them up, ‘Let’s go for dinner,’ or I go to their place and we’ll play video games or stuff like that.”

 

There is a generation gap with the group. Dončić (21), Jokić (25), Nurkić (26), Zubac (23), Čančar (23) and Hezonja (25) are all in their early-to-mid-20s. Dragić (34), Marjanović (32) and Vučević (29) are in their late-20s-to-mid-30s. There is also the country divide; in most cases, players from the same country are closer than they are with players from other countries.

For example: Dragić and Zubac don’t know each other well, mainly because they hadn’t played against each other in Europe due to the age difference, but Dragić is close with Dončić and Čančar, his countrymen.

The Disney dinner was the first time some of the players had hung out with one another. But the commonality of language, culture and ideology brought a slice of home into the bubble.
 

“I really like it,” Jokić said. “We are just having fun. Just being with all the people who speak the same language and share your opinions and the experiences we have, talk about whatever, I really like it.”

Dragić added: “We’re in a foreign country in the States — different language, different lifestyle and everything. Then when you hang out with your friends that are coming from the same area, you get a little bit more relaxed because you know where they are from and how they feel and what culture it is. So it’s definitely a different feeling.”

Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone noticed the effect the interactions had on Jokić and Čančar’s psyche during the NBA’s three-day break.

“They were having their Eastern block party,” Malone said. “You’re hanging out with a bunch of guys that you share a lot of common ground with. I think that’s definitely been helpful. … Those guys were having a good time in the bubble, which they should. I think that’s great.”

Malone actually saw the group at its second dinner, at the Grand Floridian hotel, and was impressed with the sheer basketball skill and talent from the Balkan region.

“You look at how much talent was there and you think, ‘Wow, if the former Yugoslavia was ever unified once again, that would be a helluva basketball team,’” Malone said.
 

It’s something the group has thought about, too.

As separate countries, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia are powerhouses, winning at a high level and competing for medals in international competitions. But if the former Yugoslavia were still together, and the Balkan Boys were eligible to field a team, they think they would be contending for, if not winning, gold medals at the Olympics as the United States’ biggest threat.

“We’d be really good,” Dragić said. “We would be fighting for a gold medal every year. … I mean, first of all, you would have a great pool of players. A lot of players to choose from. This would be something. If you look, a lot of competitiveness. But at the same time, a lot of qualities that you can combine.”

 

The war-torn history of their respective countries is not lost on the group. They’re aware of the thorny politics regarding the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992. The fallout still affects the region today, and it will for decades to come. All of them have been affected by it, in one form or another.

But that, in part, is the beauty of the Balkan Boys. If you rounded up a random collection of Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian 20- and 30-somethings, there’s a chance they might not get along, delving into disagreements over their countries’ respective accounts of their history, politics and war.

Yet the group looks at their cultural background and commonality as a unifier, not as a dividing force.

“We cannot go past the history,” Dragić said. “It means some bad things going on in the war and everything. But it’s over now, and we need to look to the future. I have a lot of friends in Croatia. I’m Serbian. I’m half-Serbian, half-Slovenian, and my grandparents, they were living in Bosnia. So I lived with a lot of different cultures — Christian-Orthodox, Muslims, Catholics. For me, it makes no difference.

“At the end of the day, we were the same country. We have a lot of the same stuff. What happened in the past, it happened. I was young. I was three years old when the war was going on. So I don’t have anything to do with it, you know? All those guys are awesome to me.”

Jokić, Dragić, Zubac and Čančar are the last four remaining Balkan players in the bubble. Dragić’s Miami Heat have advanced to the Eastern Conference finals after upsetting the Bucks. At least one of Jokić, Zubac and Čančar will be heading home after the Clippers-Nuggets series concludes within the next week.

But the Balkan Boys group chat is still active. Jokić and Marjanović are still teasing each other. The group is still communicating in Serbian and Croatian. Those dinners and that brunch were the highlights of the bubble for each of them.

As the Balkan Boys sat at the table overlooking Lago Dorado, cackling and singing and drinking, the lyrics to the feel-good Bosnian-Serbian folk song “Ne Moze Nam Niko Nista” (translation: “Nobody Can Touch Us”), a popular tune when one has had too much rakija, rang through the air.

Nobody will separate us
separate us

Nobody can touch us,
We’re stronger than destiny
We can only be hated
By the ones who don’t like us

Nobody can touch us
We’re stronger than destiny
We can only be hated
By the ones who don’t like us

 

[Miki28 Teoljub]

47 minutes ago, Alex_Serbia said:

Nadam se da kontas to vise nije onaj istok. Majami kako igra (pa i Boston), uopste ja ne bih bio toliko izricit kao ti da ce finale Zapada odluciti sampiona.

Ne bih uzimao za reper Filadelfiju, Indijanu i Milvoki koji se pokazao ocaj u bubble.

Klipani i Lejkersi su druga prica s' obzirom kakvu odbranu igraju.

 

Nece biti setnja ali ko god izadje sa zapada je favorit u finalu. Sad izvini sto smatram da su gradski rivali jedni drugima najveca prijetnja

[Dracarys]

Janis ce da uzima MVP priznanje do kraja karijere.

[Bivši Nugetlija]

Petak 00:30 idealno da uz kafu ispratim Denverovce na godišnji odmor.

[Miki28 Teoljub]

Anthony Davis when guarded by PJ Tucker, by game:

G1: 1/2 FG, 0/0 FT, 0 shooting fouls, 2 pts

G2: 7/13 FG, 1/1 FT, 1 shooting foul, 16 pts

G3: 2/3 FG, 3/4 FT, 1 shooting foul, 7 pts

G4: 3/5 FG, 3/3 FT, 2 shooting fouls, 9 pts

(Per NBA match-up data)

 

Through the first four games,

LeBron James and Anthony Davis when guarded by PJ Tucker:

21/41 FG 8/10 FT 5 shooting fouls drawn 52 points

 

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Miki28

[realno *w]

Po meni su ovi podaci potpuno irelevantni, barem ovo za Dejvisa. To vuče udvajanja, otvara prostor drugim igračima, te se ne odrazuje direktno na poene AD.

 

Ali da igra odbranu, igra.

Edited September 11, 2020 by realno *w

[Green23]

 

[Chaos Is Me]

5 hours ago, freethrow said:

Stefova glavata žena je pre svega dobra majka i snaja, a drugo neuporedivo gotivnija od Huanite i mnogo bolje kuva od Yvette Prieto, tako da to i nije neki argument... 

Morao sam da guglam ko su te, dok mi ova glavudžanka izleće viralno više od Stepha. 

[freethrow]

 

Ovo gore je za jadne igrače u bablu, a ovo dole je za Haosa.

Juanita je Majkl Đekson, a Prieto ne ume da kuva (iako ima sitnu, prihvatljivu glavu, po nekim frenološkim kriterijumima čak i atraktivnu).

Edited September 11, 2020 by freethrow

[Bivši Nugetlija]

Ovo gore je ako Karenjo Busta osvoji grand slam u eri velike trojke.

Edited September 11, 2020 by Nugetlija

[Green23]

 

[gggggggg]

toronto boston u 3? majkicu vam

[riviera]

Quote

Spoiler

 

Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, left, and Clippers center Ivica Zubac battle for a rebound during Game 3 of their Western Conference semifinal series on Monday.

When morning comes in Belgrade, Dejan Milojevic avoids glancing at his phone.

He doesn’t want a notification or Whatsapp message to spoil what happened while he slept during this NBA postseason series he has anticipated so greatly.

So he brews a cup of green tea and folds the 6-foot-7 frame that made him a star, undersized forward in Europe into a chair in front of his computer. Loading the previous night’s broadcast from the Clippers’ second-round matchup against the Denver Nuggets, he focuses on the opposing big men he knows well, Ivica Zubac and Nikola Jokic.

His view used to be closer.

At Mega Basket, the Serbian developmental club where he coached for eight years, Milojevic mentored a teenage Jokic for two seasons before the center left for the NBA in 2015. A year later Zubac, another 7-footer, came from Croatia at 19. Jokic’s physique needed work, but his passing turned defenses inside out. Zubac needed opportunity, but having left home at 13 determined to join the league in which his second cousin, Zoran Planinic, played and his idol, Kobe Bryant, starred, he was driven.

Milojevic feels like a delighted older brother watching his former pupils face off as starters on two of the Western Conference’s best teams. It is affirmation, he says, of something he believed long ago, something others around basketball have only awoken to recently. Forget the Adriatic League; Jokic and Zubac have the ability to rank among the best young centers in the game, full stop.

“I feel nice being part of their path,” Milojevic said during a phone interview. “I’m really — I can’t find the exact word to describe this feeling that I have. I’m proud. Proud is probably the best word.”

The efficiency of Jokic, who has averaged 24.8 points, 11.0 rebounds and 5.3 assists against the Clippers, could have been predicted. Though he arrived at Mega with conditioning Milojevic recalled as “terrible” — the coach had to break it to Jokic that the team practiced every day — basketball came easily, where he fired passes and shots at angles few dared. Within three years of joining the NBA, he’d averaged a double-double. By his fourth, he was an All-Star.

“He’s the best passing big that I’ve seen, I think, ever,” Clippers coach Doc Rivers said.

It wasn’t inevitable that Zubac would have what Rivers called the “playoff of his life” during the first round against Dallas last month, or that his effectiveness would carry over against the Nuggets.

Zubac played sparingly for his early clubs. Even the satisfaction from his breakout moment, a double-double at the 2015 under-19 world championships against a U.S. team featuring future lottery draft picks Jayson Tatum and Josh Jackson, failed to be a springboard to stardom. Months later, Zubac injured a knee. Eyeing the 2016 NBA draft, he asked to join Mega because of its history — seven alumni were on NBA rosters this season.

Zubac needed playing time, confidence and more polished tactics upon his arrival midway through the season. Yet the coach, and NBA scouts, saw an NBA future, and not only because of his shot-blocking.

“It is not easy to find talented guy willing to work,” Milojevic said. “That’s why he’s so successful.”

Zubac identifies as Croatian but grew up just across the border in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where his father owned an import-export business. When the school year ended and classmates left for summer vacations, Zubac worked in his father’s warehouse, where eight-hour shifts alongside grown men began at 8 a.m.

He was 11.

“I packed a lot of boxes,” Zubac said. “He and my mom, they were always talking like, ‘This is the way to prepare you for life, to build your working habits.’”

Thirteen days before the 2016 draft, Zubac felt his work was not yet finished in Serbia and held off traveling to the U.S.

Mega trailed Belgrade-based FMP 2-1 in a best-of-five series, whose winner would finish third in the Serbian League and qualify for the more prestigious Adriatic League the following season. Before tipoff, the coach pulled his center aside. He’d welcomed Zubac months earlier, in part because of his toughness. Now he needed to see it.

“The crucial thing to win the game is you have to stop layups,” Milojevic said. “He just told me, ‘Hey, don’t worry, you know? I’m going to kick their ass.’

Dejan Milojevic, right, during his playing days in Serbia in 2004.

“He changed the game and we won and then we go to a Game 5 that we won easily. I really loved the kid, who doesn’t have experience so much, that he played a really important game for his team, was so confident. That was really for me when I knew that he’s the guy who can make a really, really, great career.”

The footage of the game isn’t high-definition, but Mega’s trademark pink and neon green uniforms aren’t the only thing that pop. Playing with a “different kind of energy,” Zubac redirected shots at the rim. He flushed a two-handed dunk in the final minutes despite catching ahand in the jaw.

“He challenged me,” Zubac said of Milojevic. “I knew I got to get to the states to work out for the teams to show myself, but at the same point, I was like, with everything that’s waiting for me, the best way to show myself is to help this team qualify for Adriatic League and do all the things that are required for me to win. I kept that in mind and was like, ‘OK, it’s time to turn it up.’”

 

In four NBA seasons since — first with the Lakers, who drafted him 32nd overall in 2016 before trading him to the Clippers last year — Zubac can recall feeling a similar adrenaline only a handful of times.

One was March 5, against a Houston team with five starters 6-7 or less. A year earlier, Golden State’s small-ball lineup in the postseason sent Zubac to the bench. It was the motivation for every offseason workout that followed. The “crazy energy” he felt against FMP returned. He had 17 points, 12 rebounds and the Clippers routed the Rockets.

“I took it personal like, I’ll show you that a big is needed to win games,” Zubac said. “I was locked in differently.”

 

That intensity returned during the Clippers’ close-out game against Dallas in the first round. Zubac had 15 points, 11 rebounds and the Mavericks shot five of 17 against his defense.

“He’s really, really good,” Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s gotten exponentially better in the last year.”

Zubac has averaged 9.5 points and 7.0 rebounds and shot nearly 62% against Denver, all while guarding Jokic, whom he first guarded as a teenager at a tournament in Hungary. Rivers called Zubac “fantastic.”

Zubac and Jokic aren’t close, but their relationship has deepened since Zubac’s rookie year, when Mega and Milojevic served as the common link for their postgame chats. The NBA’s Disney World bubble has allowed for regular meet-ups, and Balkan players have regularly dined en masse. After an Aug. 26 all-player meeting to decide whether their walkout over racial injustice would continue, several sang Serbian songs until the wee hours at a restaurant. Zubac wasn’t there — he spent the night talking with his Clippers teammates — but joined the next day.

“It’s good to have someone who speaks your own language just to get your mind off of basketball,” Zubac said.

Milojevic has coached on Summer League staffs with Atlanta, Houston and San Antonio, and hopes to be the latest Mega import. He called a full-time assistant role an “option” for next season.

Until then, he will wake early and watch NBA League Pass, six time zones ahead. Serbian fans are rooting for Jokic, he said. But in Croatia, where Milojevic recently visited to work basketball camps, some are staying up late to watch Zubac.

“I was talking with the people, the fans,” Milojevic said. “They really are delighted. I think they can be just proud of him like I am. I’m really proud.”

Greif reported from Los Angeles.

 

Ivica Zubac’s playoff battle against Nikola Jokic is a source of pride for legendary coach

[Shonewizard]

Baguje nekome Arena?

Sent from my Redmi Note 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[Chaos Is Me]

Opet jak početak Clippersa. 

[Dracarys]

Bole me oci koji cirkus u napadu Grent i Milsap nemaju sta zajedno da traze na terenu. Milsap 0-3 za 5 minuta. Svaka cast majstore, a i Melounu koji te drzi u igri.