01-24-2024, 11:04 AM
Let me share a personal story how I became a Luka fan. I am 45, always loved basketball, playing it, following it. Had many players that I liked and more that I didn't, but I was never really a fan.
Slovenia as you know is a very small nation of only two million people and we have an average mentality where we use the fact that we are a small nation as an excuse. Basketball is one of the more popular sports and we had (on paper) a very decent team many times. A team that could compete for top places at European level. But every time we went in competitions with "we are small so should be happy to be top 8" mentality. We basically failed at every competition, many times losing key games against (on paper) far worse competitors, lost elimination games after being great in group stage or lost elimination games after being a better team for 35 minutes of the game. Basically losers. Really long and emotionally draining history of bad losses. I always hated that mentality. Being a small country is not an excuse if you have a good team.
Than in 2017 comes this 17 year old kid to the start of national team training camp. He had his first season with Real - had plenty of nice moments, but he was not the best player yet. Slovenia had peak Dragic, but other than that very average team. Just installed Kokoskov as the coach and gave citizenship to a decent Euroleague player Randolph, I think everyone else was playing at lower levels. So this kid comes and when he was asked by the media what he came for, he just fires without thinking for a second - a medal!! I was like, ok, who are you to speak about a medal, you did nothing in your career, be happy to get some playing time. Top 8 is probably the realistic goal for this team, I thought. You know how it went, Slovenia won its first (and still only EU championship) with Luka being in the first team of the tournament. This was the moment he won me over and following seasons only confirmed to me he is a natural born winner. Not a natural born leader, but a natural born winner.
Slovenia as you know is a very small nation of only two million people and we have an average mentality where we use the fact that we are a small nation as an excuse. Basketball is one of the more popular sports and we had (on paper) a very decent team many times. A team that could compete for top places at European level. But every time we went in competitions with "we are small so should be happy to be top 8" mentality. We basically failed at every competition, many times losing key games against (on paper) far worse competitors, lost elimination games after being great in group stage or lost elimination games after being a better team for 35 minutes of the game. Basically losers. Really long and emotionally draining history of bad losses. I always hated that mentality. Being a small country is not an excuse if you have a good team.
Than in 2017 comes this 17 year old kid to the start of national team training camp. He had his first season with Real - had plenty of nice moments, but he was not the best player yet. Slovenia had peak Dragic, but other than that very average team. Just installed Kokoskov as the coach and gave citizenship to a decent Euroleague player Randolph, I think everyone else was playing at lower levels. So this kid comes and when he was asked by the media what he came for, he just fires without thinking for a second - a medal!! I was like, ok, who are you to speak about a medal, you did nothing in your career, be happy to get some playing time. Top 8 is probably the realistic goal for this team, I thought. You know how it went, Slovenia won its first (and still only EU championship) with Luka being in the first team of the tournament. This was the moment he won me over and following seasons only confirmed to me he is a natural born winner. Not a natural born leader, but a natural born winner.
![[-]](https://www.mavsboard.com/images/collapse.png)