Of the many leagues and teams Serbia could have chosen from, its was the distinctively American franchise from Sacramento that between 2000 and 2005 captured its collective basketball imagination. It was the common one-two NBA punch like Stockton and Malone or Jordan and Malone, but with a Serbian twist. Serbian fans loved seeing Vlade Divac finally grow into a team leader just as it was time to face the proverbial NBA hand that fed him -- the Los Angeles Lakers that brought him into the NBA, while having alongside another homegrown Serbian sharpshooter in Peja Stojakovic.
Kings were the perfect team for Serbia to fall in love with. During the King's championship-contenting years, it was the Lakers that always got the best of the Sacramento squad. Always. 3:2 in 2000, 4:0 in 2001 and 4:3 in 2002. If Serbian's love anything, its to unite against a stronger foe. Historical side note: they went against the mighty Ottoman empire only to be enslaved for the next 500 years. Then they took the Austro-Hungarian empire which resulted in World War I. So to love the Kings was to hate the Lakers, and there was nothing wrong with that. That pre-season fight in 2002 was a big hit back in Serbia.
And now there is reason for the pendulum swing of fandom to go the other way. With the first day of fall, two months and change from now, Serbia might be a big hit with the Sacramento Kings fans. On September 22, Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Peja Stojakovic, Hedo Turkoglu, Jason Williams and Rick Adelman are getting back together. Vlade Divac is officially retiring from professional basketball in an unprecedented celebration in his hometown of Prijepolje.
And it will be a European-style celebration all the way. When fellow King and good friend Peja Stojakovic got married last year in Greece, it gathered enough big names from the world of basketball and show business in general that security costs were larger than organizational ones. Just doing it in Prijepolje is an incredible task because the celebration is expected to almost double its population of 15000 residents. Add to that the list of other celebrities that are expected to attend -- Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Scott Pollard, Toni Kukoc and Pat Riley, as well as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor Jack Nicholson and host Larry King via a satellite linkup -- and it becomes a bigger NBA event than any pre-season game, training camp or basketball clinic that the league ever organized on the Old Continent.
Serbia can be proud of the city that will have the world media gathered for the event. Located some 100 miles south of the capital city of Belgrade, Prijepolje is surrounded with politically volatile territories in Montenegro and Kosovo, yet has always maintained a peaceful and ethnically harmonious existence. Vlade never stops talking about how fulfilling and fun growing up there was and now the rest of the world will have a chance to see why.
