Serbia is land of basketball

About a year ago, I made post with same caption like this article on one other platform (at the time, I didn't use read), and I am very happy that I can make it this year again, and it's not old news, but same thing happened this year as well. What is it about? It's about MVP players of the biggest basketball competitions in the world.

Last year, MVP (which stands for most valuable player), of NBA was Nikola Jokic, Serbia player whose team is Denver Nuggets. This year, he managed to repeat success, and he is yet again, most valuable player of the strongest basketball league in the world. Basically, he is the best player on earth, right? :D Beside him, only 12 other players in NBA history managed to have this title two times in a row.

Next is MVP of Euro League. Last year, this title belonged to Vasilije Micic, but this year, MVP is Nikola Mirotic, yet another Serbian player. He is player of Spanish club Barcelona, and even though Barcelona didn't win Euro League this year, or even come second (they were third this season), most valuable player came from their team.

I already mentioned Vasilije Micic, and he was MVP of Euro League last year, but this year he was also MVP, but MVP of final four (which are last 4 games with best 4 teams, semi-finals, and final, as well as third place game). Also, he is in top performance for this season, based on points.

Beside Euro League, there is also another basketball competition in Europe, Euro Cup. And believe it or not, the most valuable player of this competition is as well Serbian. It is Milos Teodosic, who plays for Italian club, Virtus. Also, he was very successful in the past, and I find him as another amazing player.

Last year I wrote about 4 MVPs but this year, there are 4 Serbian players that took this title. This would be success for anyone, and considering that Serbia is not a big and powerful country, it's even bigger success, for one country to have 4 MVP players in the same year.

I would say Serbia is the land of sport in general, we are quite passionate about it, and successful, but football is the most popular even though we are the least successful in it (in terms of representation). However, we are quite successful in volleyball, water polo, handball, and some other individual sports, like tennis, swimming.

I would like to highlight some national basketball success that we had so far, here is for woman:

• Olympic games - bronze (2016)

• EuroBasket - current champions - gold 2 times(2015, 2021), bronze (2019)

And for man:

• Olympic games - gold (1980), silver 5 times (1968, 1976, 1988, 1996,2016), bronze (1984)

• EuroBasket - gold 8 times (1973, 1975, 1977, 1989, 1991, 1995, 1997, 2001), silver 7 times (1961, 1965, 1971, 1981, 2009, 2017), bronze 4 times (1963, 1979, 1987, 1999)

• FIBA Basketball World Cup - gold 5 times (1970, 1978, 1990, 1998, 2002), silver 4 times (1963, 1967, 1974, 2014), bronze 2 times (1982, 1986)

It is good to mention that woman basketball representation is far less part of FIBA, so their medals in that time of period are amazing. Also, as you can see, despite great players that we have all around the world, representation wasn't doing great lately (man representation wasn't even part of last Olympics), and hopefully it will change soon.

Photos used in this article are from Unsplash.com

Thank you for reading my article ^^