Vojislav Stojanovic: signing with Turin was the biggest mistake of my career

Vojislav Stojanovic speaks with B92 of the years spent playing in Italy.

About Gianluca Basile

“I’ll just tell you that Gianluca Basile doesn’t have jeans in his closet, nothing but tracksuits. He’s a legend, a very good man. He had a great relationship with me, he knows our mentality and he approached me very nicely. I went fishing with him, I remember we caught a tuna that weighed 130 kilograms. Basile is not interested in anything but basketball and fishing. At the age of 40, he spent four or five hours a day in the hall”.

“At the age of 18, Basile played in Reggio Emilia and worked as a “carabinieri”. Every day he traveled four hours to the some city to work as a soldier, then he came back, went to training and so on every day. So it was until the age of 21. Unprecedented commitment. A great player, even bigger as a man. He is one of mine favorite teammates.”

About Torino

This is maybe the biggest mistake of my career. I had an offer to sign a multi-year contract with Milan and play my first season on loan, or to play one year with Turin in the Eurocup. I thought, ‘If I play the Eurocup well, maybe next year i’ll sign for a better club ‘. I was guided by that logic and I thought I wasn’t wrong, but from this perspective … I’d better sign a perennial with Milan. I made a big mistake, but no one knew what would happen in Turin”.

On Larry Brown

Larry Brown promised me towers and cities (idioms, smh big). He talked to my manager, told him how I would play for 30 minutes and how he would take care of me. I believed in it, but obviously it wasn’t like that. Larry Brown is a great coach, he coached Alain Iverson, won the title with Detroit, and as far as that is concerned, he is a great legend … But, he played a lot of games in Europe and lost them all. It is obvious that his system of work could not function in Europe. ”

More about Torino

“I played a great friendly match against Varese and Larry Brown told me after the match: ‘You played great, just keep it up.’ I thought we were on good terms again, but the next morning I came to the hall and the president’s son was waiting for me and he tells me, “Larry doesn’t want you on the team anymore. You don’t have to come to training”. More precisely, I had one training session a day and they set that training to be at seven in the morning. That’s how I trained for two months.”