Slovenia did not win the EuroBasket. I still enjoyed (almost) every second of it.
“I’m home. Let’s go watch Luka play basketball.”
This was the message I got from Simon, an old friend and fellow basketball player. The last time I saw him was six years ago, the first time he returned to Slovenia after leaving for Australia more than a decade ago. His story is kind of wild: his girlfriend got a job, he goes with her to the other side of the world, they break up soon after. However, he remained as a gym instructor and basketball coach for the Australian Miners in Christmas Creek, Queensland. The mine is located in the rocky Pilbara Desert, one of the oldest places in the world, but even that doesn’t stop this Slovenian from watching Mavericks games during his lunch break.
We met on the terrace of a small tennis club in Ljubljana, where Simon and his friends were “warming up” and watching the match between Slovenia and Poland in the EuroBasket quarterfinals. I was excited to spend some time with my friend again after all these years. The last time we went to watch basketball together was more than 20 years ago at the UEFA European Championship in Amsterdam. I wrote about this trip in the first part of the EuroBasket diary and tried to explain why it is so important for Slovenians to follow our national team. It turned out that we might soon have another chance: we both independently planned to go to Germany to compete for medals if Slovenia made it this far. I just got back from four days in Cologne and watched the team play, but I couldn’t wait any longer.
We got so distracted reliving old stories and planning our upcoming trip that we almost missed the hint. Nobody was nervous about this game. Poland was supposed to be just the last obstacle before the “party” we would have in Berlin.
Now, things don’t usually end well when you take things for granted – and unfortunately, both we and our basketball team did. Poland shocked Slovenia and caused one of the biggest shocks in EuroBasket history. We stared in disbelief at the TV screen as Luka Dončić looked dead, and our plans came crashing down as gloriously as the Berlin Wall.
After that, I admit that I struggled to find the motivation to write this article. But as usual, my editor Mike Piellucci was right when he told me to write about my EuroBasket experience, not necessarily basketball itself. After taking two days to get over the disappointment, I realized that I had almost forgotten how much fun my time in Cologne had been. With its run of NCAA tournaments (at least in the playoffs), EuroBasket has offered everything we love about sports: crazy competitive play, passion, thrills, joy, disappointments, and, unfortunately, some bad officiating. Seeing players like Doncic, Rudy Gobert, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo competing for their countries surrounded by fans from different parts of Europe was truly an amazing experience. This only happens once every four years – in this case five due to the pandemic.
My EuroBasket experience began as it ended: with shock. My colleague Miha, whom you read about last time, and I flew to Cologne on Sunday morning before the third match of the Slovenian group stage against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Slovenia opened the tournament with a bang, winning against strong Lithuania and taking care of business against the worst team in the group, Hungary. So this next game should be a warm-up for our last two group stage games against Germany and France.
What did I say about not taking things for granted? The Bosnians, led by Portland Trail Blazers great Jusuf Nurkić and former Brooklyn Net Dzanan Musa and inspired by raucous, soccer crowds, upset the uninspired Slovenians. Doncic, who struggled in that game, repeatedly barked at his head coach, while team manager Goran Dragic had some uncharacteristically passive-aggressive comments when asked about his lack of playing time during the postgame media availability.
All of a sudden, things looked bleak. Miha was so depressed that he left the game early without saying a word. So not only did we lose the game, I also lost my friend in the middle of Cologne. Afterwards, I needed some time and Kölsch – a local beer named after the town served in small glasses called “stangen” in bars around the city – to collect my thoughts and lick my wounds. It was already late, but I didn’t want to fall asleep. Got to see some friendly faces. I decided to stop one last time and see the “Slovenska house”, which was not a house at all. It’s actually a bar: Papa Joe’s Biersalon pub in the center of Cologne. It served as the seat of Slovenian fans, a meeting place before and after every game. I wasn’t expecting much action after such a demoralizing defeat, but to my surprise the place was shaking when I got there. Everyone danced and sang Slovenian music. And of course I found Miha among the loudest crowd.
Somewhere in the middle of this, a Bosnian entered the bar wearing a Nets jersey no. 30 Musa. Taking in the scene, he turned to me and asked one question: “What do you do when you’re actually winning, if that’s the case when you’re losing?”
Over the next two days, the spirit of the party almost disappeared. Most of the Slovenian media were concerned with the defeat, but the pressure was growing on our team to turn things around in the next game. Which was somewhat problematic, as Slovenia was playing host Germany, which had dominated the group up to that point.
As expected, the sold-out 19,500-seat Lanxess Arena in Cologne was filled with Mavericks jerseys No. 41 of Nowitzki, after the Big German retired his national team jersey No. documented). I was surprised to see just as many Luke Mavs jerseys – if not more – among the German fans in the arena. For us Slovenians, it is almost unimaginable that you wear the jersey of the opposing player during the match of your national team. This speaks volumes for the Mavericks’ deep connection to Dirk’s homeland.
Before tip-off, as I stared at Dirk’s retired jersey hanging from the rafters, I wondered if the 23-year-old Doncic had finally gotten over the pressure of carrying the hopes of both the Mavericks franchise and his home country on his back. The game with Bosnia was bad, but before that he had so much EuroBasket. In addition to the problems on the field, Marc Stein delivered the news Dončić, who filed a petition to regain control of the trademark with his name, which is currently owned by his mother. I wasn’t exactly relieved moments later when our center Mike Tobey rolled his ankle and landed on the referee’s leg after the kickoff.
But things took a turn for the better with 3:46 left in the second quarter when Doncic made his first three-pointer of the evening. Struggling to shoot throughout the tournament, he may have bowed his head to his feet with a smile and thanked the basketball gods — or, with Dirk’s jersey above, the Dallas shooting god — for finally providing him with a bucket. Like him, I remembered a verse from a popular Slovenian fan song that we sang on my trip to Amsterdam 20 years ago. It went something like this: “Just give me one small goal and everything will be as it was before.” In Luke’s case, one small step back turned out to be all he—and we—needed.
From that moment, Luka went into full takeover mode. He abused every possible German defender on his way to the basket and 36 points. Doncic took it to another level the next night when he scored 47 points against France, arguably the best EuroBasket performance of all time. I was lucky enough to experience Luka Magic in person during a trip to Dallas in February earlier this year, seeing Doncic score a career-high 51 points and then go on to score 45 in back-to-back games against the Los Angeles Clippers in America. Airlines Center. But this time it was much more emotional to experience it as a fan and cheer for your country. There were two days of passion, two days of joy, two days of our singing MVP, MVP after each bucket made. Two days of feeling invincible, even when you were up against two of the best teams in Europe (France and Germany went on to win silver and bronze). Two days of fun celebrating victories late into the night at the Slovenian House, where other craziness was happening, like Lithuanian fans trying to sing Slovenian folk music or me getting into a heated debate with a German about the best European basketball player of all times (before I finally found him common ground about Dennis Schroder being a terrible fit for the Mavericks).
I’m glad Mike encouraged me to do this story. It forced me to unpack some of the moments I’d stuffed into a mental box labeled “Never Open Again” after a disappointing quarterfinal loss. So much of sports focuses on the result of the last game that we forget the joy we have along the way. But joy is what this should really be about.
Let’s hope that Luka can do it too. Hopefully he can rest and reflect, appreciate the positive moments and learn from the negative ones. It will not be easy, because the disappointment of this, his feeling that it let his country down, will be hell for a while. Defeat in the quarterfinals could be the first real setback of his career.
But a man learns much more wisdom from failure than from success, so I bet it makes him stronger. He won’t have to wait long for his next opportunity. The Mavericks’ media day is next Monday, and the season opener against the Phoenix Suns is less than a month away. Slovenians will be watching, as always. We only need one small step back and everything will be as before.
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Outbreak Franko covers Mavericks for StrongSide. He is an analyst who uncovers the stories hidden in NBA data and basketball…