Basketball Statistics Blog

Basketball Players: Happy Birthday Vlade Divac !

Vlade Divac (Serbian Cyrillic: Владе Дивац, pronounced [ˈvlaːdɛ ˈdiːvaʦ]) (born February 3, 1968 in Prijepolje, Serbia, Yugoslavia) is a retired Serbian professional basketball player who spent most of his career in the United States' NBA. At 7'1", he played center and was known for his passing skills. Divac was among the first group of European Basketball players to transfer to the NBA in the late 1980s and is one of Euroleague's 50 greatest contributors. Divac is one of the only three players in NBA history to record 13,000 points, 9,000 rebounds, 3,000 assists and 1,500 blocked shots, with the two others being hall-of-famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Hakeem Olajuwon.

Aside from being noticed for his basketball abilities, Divac is also known as a great humanitarian, helping children his native country of Serbia, as well as in Africa. On October 16, 2008, Divac was appointed as a government adviser in Serbia for humanitarian issues.

Photographs: 24 Sec.net

"... After the 2003-04 NBA season, he became a free agent. He signed a deal to return to the Lakers and was part of a grand plan to overhaul Laker basketball. The Lakers, following a defeat in the NBA Finals, had traded away or released most of their players, including Shaquille O'Neal, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Derek Fisher and more; Divac was supposed to fill that void. However, Divac suffered back problems and was unable to play for most of the season, and even when he returned, was only able to play about nine minutes per game, averaging 2.3 points per game and 2.1 rebounds per game in 15 games, he played 8 games early in the season and 7 more in the final month of the season. On 14 July 2005, Divac announced his retirement, ending his sixteen-year basketball career. ..."

"... In June 2006, through his friendship with Predrag Mijatović, Divac linked up with Ramón Calderón as part of the lawyer's candidate bid for the presidency of Real Madrid polideportivo. When Calderón closely won the club elections on July 2, 2006, Divac was introduced as the head of operations at Real Madrid basketball club.

However, Divac's role in the club's day to day operations is largely symbolic, and even he himself admitted as much in a March 2007 interview for Croatian weekly Globus: "I literally do nothing and I only serve as part of the royal club's image. I only accepted the job because of Mijatović, who is currently the football director at Real". ..."

Read Vlade Divac's full story and statistics in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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