The Serbian sharpshooter told FIBA.basketball his story on EuroBasket 2001, when the former Yugoslavia brought home a gold medal after wining all games in double digits except for the Final agains Turkey (78-69).
Stojakovic averaged 23.0 points per game in 2001, connecting on 18-of-35 three-pointers over the six games.
“It’s been almost 20 years already! But when I think about 2001, I think about how dominant and superior we were, thirsty and hungry to get one back after the debacle of the 2000 Summer Olympics.”
“Our team was really strong, really deep. I’m not sure I can even call our bench unit a true bench unit, because we are talking about guys who were the main protagonists in their clubs, played on really high levels of professional basketball, so we had a nice balance to our squad with coach Svetislav Pesic as the conductor to our orchestra.”
“That’s what I said about the role players not really being role players, but being high level players in their club careers. Vlado Scepanovic used his opportunity perfectly in the title game, Dejan Bodiroga accepted the role of the sixth man, Sasa Obradovic was the veteran point guard who gave us a lot of calmness when we needed it… We were just supposed to get the team through a transition from the golden generations into something new, but with so much support from older guys, and so much motivation from everybody, we turned out to be a well balanced squad.”
“FIBA EuroBasket was a different competition back then. We won it in just six games, you know that different formats have changed and it now seems that more teams have a chance to win it, more teams have a chance to bounce back after a bad game because there are more games, obviously. We had three games, then straight to the Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals and the Final.”
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