https://sportando.basketball/en/101-greats-toni-kukoc/
The day after the final, Aleksandar Djordjevic, Partizan’s point guard at the time, talked to Borba newspaper and said the following: “Congratulations to Jugoplastika. They are born winners and they have a winning mentality. I think that Toni Kukoc, despite being only 23, is the best Yugoslav basketball player ever.”
I don’t know if Djordjevic still feels the same way about that, but I do know people who would agree with every word that he said 22 years ago. Bozidar Maljkovic, the coach and builder of the great Jugoplastika, doesn’t compare Kukoc to players from other eras, but he does say: “Toni Kukoc is the best player I ever coached. Huge talent, versatile, able to play all five positions. He also won all the important titles.”
Signed at the beach
If genes have something to do with a career as a sportsman, Toni Kukoc was somehow destined for sports because of his father, Ante, who had been a goalkeeper on the teams of Nada and Split and was crazy about any sport. Since he was a child, Kukoc, who was born on September 18, 1968, showed a talent for all sports, but basketball would enter his life rather late. First, there was table tennis. Radojka, Toni’s mother, was happy to enroll him in table tennis because practices took place in Gripe pavilion, just a hundred meters away from the Kukoc family apartment.
Soon enough, Toni showed a great talent for the sport and at just 10 years old, he was champion of Dalmatia, a coastal region of Croatia. However, his true love was football and, like any kid in Split, his dream was one day wearing the jersey of the famous local club Hajduk. With the support of his father, Kukoc passed the texts at 11 and joined the Hajduk cadet team. He was good, some even say very good, but problems started when he began growing fast. At 13 years old he was already 1.90 meters, but he was very thin, too, and that earned him the nickname “Olive” – after Popeye’s girlfriend in the comic strip.
Kukoc kept playing football until he was 15. In the summer of 1983, Igor Karkovic – a young talent scout for Jugoplastika – saw a group of young kids playing several sports on a beach close to Split. His attention was caught strongly, however, by a very tall kid with great movements and coordination who was also a great swimmer. Karkovic was surprised when the kid told him that he didn’t play basketball at all. So Krakovic invited him to a tryout, to which Toni agreed. He practiced football and basketball at the same time for a while, but – fortunately – basketball won.
... After putting an end to his career in the summer of 2006, Kukoc got out of basketball. His passion is golf, but he has also insinuated that he’d like to be a coach. If that happens someday, basketball will be better still for the continued presence of Toni Kukoc, the genius from Split.
