Serbian basketball coach
Božidar "Boža" Maljković (; born 20 April 1952) is a Serbian former professional basketball coach and current president of the Olympic Committee of Serbia.
He is one of the most successful basketball coaches in Europe, having won league titles with practically all the clubs he trained; including four EuroLeague titles with three clubs (Jugoplastika, Limoges, and Panathinaikos). In 2008, he was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors.
His daughter Marina is a Serbian professional basketball coach, currently coaching Serbia women's national team.
Early life.
Born in Otočac within the region of Lika to Serb parents hailing from villages in the vicinity of nearby Brinje, eight-year-old Maljković's parents moved the family to Kraljevo due to his Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officer father getting reassigned there.
Maljković was an avid cyclist in his youth; he took up basketball at the age of 12, playing the shooting guard position at KK Sloga. Assessing his own playing skills in an interview decades later, Maljković said: "I could shoot the ball fairly decently, but had no defensive skills. As a coach, I would never pick Maljković the player on any serious team".
A few years later, during the mid-1960s, the family moved to Belgrade, settling in an apartment within the newly built "Šest kaplara" housing development for the JNA officers' families, located in New Belgrade's Blok 21 adjacent to the Ušće neighbourhood. During his time in "Šest kaplara", teenage Maljković was neighbours with water polo players Mirko Sandić and Zoran Janković, prominent VK Partizan and Yugoslav national team members at the time.
Coaching career.
Having ended his playing career prematurely at only 19 years of age, Maljković immediately began coaching at Ušće, newly established basketball outfit from the eponymous Belgrade neighbourhood. Maljković is among the four people who founded the fledgling club in 1971 on the initiative of local communist authorities from the New Belgrade municipality. Reportedly, the catalyst to set up a new, community-based basketball activity was a gruesome crime in the Ušće neighbourhood that saw a local resident murder his own son; the shock throughout the community prompted the local authorities into establishing a basketball club in order to provide the neighbourhood youngsters with a creative outlet. The murder came on the heels of a general increase in criminality in the 12,000-resident Ušće local community that mostly consisted of recently arrived families of the Yugoslav People's Army officers and personnel from all over SFR Yugoslavia; this local spike in crime only sped up the process of establishing a basketball club as means of channeling the energy of the local youth into something positive.
Maljković, himself a young man, began coaching the club in 1971. In parallel to coaching basketball, Maljković enrolled at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Law though he never graduated. Working in extremely modest circumstances without regular access to a gym and with mostly outdoor practices in Ušće park, the club still managed to gain multiple promotions and jump several ranks of competition.
In 1977, Maljković took a coaching offer from the Crvena zvezda youth system, becoming head coach of the club's junior team.
Radnički Belgrade.
In 1979, noticing Maljković's dedication and enthusiasm both at Ušće and Red Star, established head coach Bata Đorđević invited the 27-year-old across town to be his assistant at Radnički Belgrade, another Belgrade club that much like KK Ušće started out as a community-based operation in the city neighbourhood of Crveni Krst. Seeing Radnički had been playing in the First Federal League (top tier on the Yugoslav basketball pyramid), Maljković jumped at the opportunity. The club was also only six years removed from its biggest success – 1973 national league title. In the years following their domestic title, they additionally put together memorable European campaigns, reaching the 1973–74 FIBA European Champions Cup semifinal as well as 1976–77 FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup final. Despite being in constant shadow of the city giants Crvena zvezda and Partizan, Radnički nevertheless managed to carve out a place for itself on the Yugoslav basketball map, establishing an identity of a scrappy small club regularly punching above its weight.
1979–80 season: assistant to Bata Đorđević.
In Maljković's first season at Radnički as Đorđević's assistant, the club finished with a 9–13 record, placing 10th in the 12-team league thus barely avoiding relegation. It also experienced major budgetary problems with its main financial backers, state-owned Fabrika odlivaka Beograd (FOB) iron foundry factory, cutting its sponsorship. At one point during the season Maljković, who had temporarily quit his law studies, said he did not receive a salary for five months.
1980–81 season: first top-level head coaching experience.
Continual financial struggles at the club affected it in various ways, including the departure of head coach Đorđević during summer 1980. Young Maljković became his replacement, admitting to getting the position "not because I was somehow the best fit to lead this particular team, but simply because nobody else wanted the job". Playing their home games at Hala sportova, 28-year-old Maljković's debut season as head coach in the First League brought no improvement for the club that finished with identical 9–13 record, good for 9th place this time. Maljković's Radnički, however, directly influenced the title race by beating Cibona late in the season (handing Cibona only its third loss that season) thus enabling their Hala co-tenants Partizan to take the championship by catching up to Cibona's 19–3 record and overtaking it at the top of the table due to better head-to-head record (this was before the playoff system was introduced in the league).
1981–82 season.
Maljković stayed for the 1981–82 season as well, leading Radnički one more time to its now customary 9–13 record. At the end of the season, the club saw another big exodus of its players and staff, including Maljković, due to more sponsors backing out.
Summing up his time with Radnički, in 2013 Maljković expressed "certain sadness all these years later due to feeling I could've done more with that team, something like what I managed with Jugoplastika later, but on a smaller scale, because we had a very talented group of young players along with some older ones".
Six months in Stara Pazova.
After Radnički, during summer 1982 Maljković took a head coaching offer from KK Lifam, a club from Stara Pazova playing in the Yugoslav First B League, the country's second-tier competition.
He remained living in Belgrade and would drive out to Stara Pazova every morning for practices.
Ranko Žeravica's assistant at Crvena zvezda.
With a bit of a coaching CV now behind him, Maljković was approached in early 1983 by Crvena zvezda about joining their coaching staff as assistant to legendary coach Ranko Žeravica in addition to an offer of simultaneously leading the club's youth system. He took the job largely due to Žeravica's clout and authority in Yugoslav basketball despite advice from some colleagues who felt that taking an assistant job after being a head coach in the First League was a step backward career-wise.
Jugoplastika.
Maljković's big head coaching break would come at Jugoplastika, where he arrived in early summer 1986 on recommendation from Yugoslav basketball's universally revered elder statesman Aca Nikolić who, having just recently retired from active coaching, took on an advisory role with the Split club. The young assistant coach was not the club's first choice as they initially wanted Vlade Đurović, the hottest coaching commodity in Yugoslav basketball at the time having just led Zadar to the league championship. In demand Đurović, however, turned down the head coaching offer from Split, choosing the one from Crvena zvezda instead so after unsuccessfully courting a few more candidates Jugoplastika eventually turned to Maljković who gladly accepted.
The appointment of a young and unproven head coach was not without critics at Split, including some within the club such as 19-year-old center Dino Rađa who openly talked to the press about his displeasure with the hiring of Maljković who in the young player's opinion "lacked head coaching experience". And it wasn't just Rađa questioning Maljković's coaching credentials because the quiet consensus around Split at the time was that Jugoplastika is a potent squad loaded with young talent and as such needs an experienced coach to provide leadership, not someone still learning his craft.
Jugoplastika ended the just completed 1985–86 league season in 6th spot (outside of the top four required to make the playoffs) following a turbulent campaign that started with Slavko Trninić as head coach, before he got the sack due to poor results early on and got replaced with Zoran Slavnić. Freewheeling Slavnić initiated a squad overhaul by bringing younger players into the first team (including great 17-year-old prospect – small forward Toni Kukoč who was equally adept at playing any other position) and giving them greater freedom on the court. This resulted in Jugoplastika ending the season with a 12–10 record that tied it with Šibenka and Partizan, however due to worse head-to-head record against the two teams it ended in 6th spot and out of the playoffs, still good for a Korać Cup berth next season. Despite clear improvement since his arrival Slavnić still left at the end of the season.
1986–87: building a future champion.
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"My toughest game in my four years at Jugoplastika was without any doubt the very first time we faced Partizan. It was in Split versus their strong, powerful, and extremely talented side. I remember their club president Dragan Kićanović walking by my bench before the game, telling me provocatively: 'What's the matter, shitting your pants?' And I wasn't ashamed to admit to him that I was in fact very afraid. It was essential that we show we can play a team like that because we were still an unproven quantity. At halftime we had −6, and I remember going to the locker room paralyzed with fear, thinking: 'Maybe this is it for me and for this team. Maybe the more financially powerful clubs like Cibona (who were reigning Euro champs and in the middle of this great domestic winning run) will pillage half of my squad and lure Kukoč and Rađa away'. So, yes, that game was the toughest. In comparison, all the other ones, including the Euroleague final fours, were easy stuff."
Boža Maljković
The young 34-year-old coach Maljković thus took over a young squad with supremely talented Kukoč and Rađa as its biggest assets. Other prominent players on the team included the twenty-year-old shooting guard Velimir Perasović and twenty-two-year-old center Goran Sobin. Several older players such as Ivica Dukan left the club that summer. Maljković's only summer acquisition of note was the twenty-two-year-old point guard Zoran Sretenović from Crvena zvezda where he wasn't getting much of a chance to play as backup to established national team player Zoran Radović; Maljković knew the player and his situation at Red Star well, having spent a year coaching him there. Liking Sretenović's character qualities and believing in his basketball skills, Maljković decided to give him a chance by bringing him in to be the team's primary playmaker, envisioning his role at Jugoplastika as the main distributor on offense for Kukoč and Rađa. Maljković's decision to get Sretenović was second-guessed among the club's management who simply didn't know the player and were hoping for an established name.
Under the tutelage of sixty-two-year-old professor Nikolić who had finished his coaching career and now acted as a coaching consultant, Maljković set about molding the obvious raw basketball talent this young squad possessed. In interviews with the local press, he identified lack of recognizable playing structure as the problem he wants the team to overcome. To that end, in stark contrast to his predecessor Slavnić, Maljković insisted on strict discipline as well as frequent and exhausting training sessions, believing the sheer quantity of work put in will eventually yield results for Jugoplastika against its formidable Yugoslav League rivals such as reigning European champion Cibona led by 22-year-old Dražen Petrović, reigning league champion Zadar, young and up-and-coming Parizan, and experienced Crvena zvezda. Maljković's first season in charge already provided some encouraging signs as Jugoplastika finished the league regular season with a 15–7 record, which was enough for the 3rd spot (behind 22–0 Cibona and 18–4 Partizan) and a playoff berth.
The season in Europe was not as promising. Drawn in a round-robin group with Olympique Antibes, Divarese Varese, and FC Barcelona, Jugoplastika managed only two wins in its six games, finishing last and getting eliminated from the 1986–87 FIBA Korać Cup at the very first hurdle.
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