Peja's life pendulum, you see, has swung back and forth dramatically ever since his Serb parents decided to stay away from Pozega until local Croats stopped spraying their house at night with bullets. Their retreat to Belgrade, a 10-hour drive away, became permanent after they learned their house and store had been looted and torched. That's when Peja discovered opportunity can sprout from misfortune, because it was in Belgrade that his path to the NBA began. "In a small city like Pozega, you don't even dream about that," he says. "We were watching a game on TV once, and my father said, 'Are we going to see you on TV?' He was joking."
Not that Belgrade was particularly hospitable to refugees. Stojakovic felt like an outsider there, even after a coach from the city's pro team, Red Star, saw him playing after school and invited him to join the junior team. Peja's game had been honed on an outdoor court behind his house in Pozega, where he worked on shots and moves gleaned from a tape of Michael Jordan and North Carolina playing an exhibition against the Yugoslavian national team. But he'd never played 1-on-1 or 2-on-2, or any of the shooting contests he was now winning. And the kids in Belgrade weren't wild about the bumpkin with the worn Drazen Petrovic shoes who beat them at their own games. Then again, these weren't just games to Peja. They were the means to a pro contract that might end his family's refugee status. "My family worked hard to give us a nice life," he says. "Then we lost everything overnight."
After two years of feeling unwanted, Peja didn't think twice when the Greek team PAOK offered him a five-year deal that allowed him to move his family. He was just 16, and Greece offered little refuge at first. Yugoslavia's unrest had spurred sanctions throughout Europe, official and otherwise, and his new country refused to issue him a playing permit for two seasons. Still, his decision paid off when Kings GM Geoff Petrie attended a PAOK practice and stumbled upon the proverbial hidden gem. "I thought he had an American-type game," Petrie says. "Range, mobility, size."
The Kings made Stojakovic the 14th pick in 1996, a move that looked foolish when he couldn't break his PAOK deal, then snapped his right leg on a spin move the following winter. He believes the injury was caused by a stress fracture that PAOK officials said was a strained muscle. They masked it with painkillers so strong Peja didn't realize his leg was broken until he looked down and saw it flopping sideways below his knee. Not surprisingly, he took the Kings up on their offer to rehab in Sacramento, where Petrie spent two months driving him to the gym for therapy every morning.
After his leg healed, Peja needed time to clear his head when he returned to Greece. Friends had told him about Sveta Gora, a peaceful peninsula well-known throughout Europe as a place for spiritual retreat. But he had little idea of what was in store when he made a three-day reservation at one of the monasteries. The regimen: up at 4 a.m., pray until 7; lunch at 10:30 in silence while a monk reads Bible passages aloud; more prayer; dinner at 4; conversation with bunkmates (two to four to a room) until bedtime at sunset. No lights, no electricity, no phones. Just fresh fish from the sea, vegetables from the garden, water or wine from the vineyard. "You live by their rules," Peja says. "The first two days I wondered why I was there."
He now returns for one day every summer, praying for good health for himself and his family.
:lol:
