SPORT SPORTS
Sa selektorom Rankom Žeravicom na čelu svetski šampioni postali su Krešimir Ćosić, Dragutin Čermak, Nikola Plećaš, Vinko Jelovac, Damir Šolman, Aljoša Žorga, Ivo Daneu, Ljubodrag Simonović, Ratomir Tvrdić, Dragan Kapičić, Petar Skansi i Trajko Rajković
svetskih zlata osvojila je Jugoslavija koliko jedino još ima SAD / world golds won by Yugoslavia, with the U.S. being the only other country to have won as many titles 5
barely managed to acquire suits, and then they went to see the country’s top man, to whom Stane Dolanc, a Slovenian political official with great ambitions that he later realised, handed over a gold medal. And where did Dolanc get a gold medal? Well, he took it from Rabotnički coach Lazar Lečić, who had been Žer- avica’s assistant and the original recipient of the 14 th medal. “e championship ended right on 24 th May, and on 25 th May we were received by Tito, on his birthday. I remember giv- ing my medal to Tito, who gave us those Schaffhausen watches. Who would give him the medal that Dolanc had promised him? Either Ćosić or me? He was a player, Ranko normally pulls first, and I gave it to him, and it was handed over to him by Stane Dolanc, personally. And thus my medal ended up with Tito,” recounted Lečić. In the end, everyone recalls with smiles Tito’s legendary sentence when receiving the national team’s basket- ball players in Belgrade: “You know what, comrades, we mustn’t throw the Ameri- cans and the Russians into the same basket,” said the marshal, prompting an avalanche of laughter. That’s how Yugoslavia achieved the first of five world golds (the U.S. is the only other country to have five world titles), entered the golden decade in which four more were won and laid the foundations of basketball, which became a new na- tional brand. Precisely 50 years later, nothing has changed; those heroes have not been forgotten, and basketball is played everywhere in Serbia. There are courts next to hospitals, be- side other sports pitches, with improvised courts and bas- kets made of wood, plastic etc. All this ensured that Serbian kids became planetary stars for decades, and that the Yugo- slav school of basketball extended far beyond the borders of the country and the region.
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