Chicago Bulls
G: Mark Price
G: Drazen Petrovic
F: Julius Erving
F: Shawn Kemp, Larry Nance
C: Vlade Divac, Jermaine O'Neal
I am happy with the versatility of the big man rotation. I got 4 guys who can all play alongside one another. Vlade gives me a high post facilitator / glue guy. Kemp gives me a power PF or a small ball C. Jermaine gives me a defensive C. Nance gives me an all-round glue guy at PF.
I believe that big man versatility will allow me to matchup against any type of big man combination in the league / team style of play. So very happy with that.
Vlade and Drazen playing together once again! Love this! They were roommates and best friends growing up. Unfortunately, their friendship fall apart because of a stupid incident in the Final of the 1990 FIBA World Cup.
Vlade is Serbian. Drazen was Croatian. They were both playing for united Yugoslavia (= Serbia + Croatia + Slovenia + Bosnia and Herzegovina + North Macedonia + Montenegro + Kosovo). Let's say they were the United States of the Balkans. Yogoslavia had just won the FIBA World Cup. Everybody was celebrating. A Croatian fan in the stands was waving a croatian flag. Vlade felt like the croatian flag was promoting separatism. He grabbed the flag and he threw it away. Drazen learned about this incident the following day. They had a huge fight. That was it. They never spoke again. Drazen died in a crash in 1993. Vlade was beyond devastated. He never got the chance to make peace with his best friend. They were like brothers prior to the flag incident.
ESPN released a documentary about this story. Vlade was a hero in Serbia during the civil war, but he was a vilain in Croatia. About 2 decades later, he returned to Croatia to visit Drazen's mother in an effort to finally make peace with his old buddy. Here's some footage from the documentary. Amazingly enough, it involves the Celtics as well (click on the second link). The Yugoslavia NT played an exhibition game against the Celtics in 1988. Larry says Drazen was the best player in Europe. Maybe the best player in the world! Danny compares him to Pistol Pete. What a player Drazen was! Just as good as Doncic, if not better. Steal of the draft imo, even at #39. Vlade ain't no scrub either. I had him ranked as the 9th best Center in the draft. He's a starting-calibre Center in my book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGkdCuQ72fohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVw5vnukwJ4Personally speaking, I hate flags. All they do is divide people. The croatian flag divides croatians from non-croatians, the US flag divides americans from non-americans, the canadian flag divides canadians from non-canadians and so on and so forth. The way I see it, nationalism sucks big time. Unfortunately, it's on the rise once again. Not just in the US, throughout the world.