Žarko Paspalj (Serbian Cyrillic: Жарко Паспаљ; born March 27, 1966) is a Serbian former professional basketball player and sports administrator, who is currently the sporting director for Partizan of the Serbian Serbian League (KLS), the ABA League, and the EuroLeague. The EuroLeague Final Four MVP in 1994, his sixteen and a half seasons career was mostly spent in Yugoslavia and Greece, along with several short stints in the NBA, France, and Italy.
Paspalj was a FIBA European Selection in 1991. For years, Paspalj was an automatic choice for Yugoslavia's senior national team, representing his country in one FIBA World Cup, two Olympics, and four EuroBaskets. He earned an All-EuroBasket Team selection in 1989. He was named to the 101 Greats of European Basketball in 2018. He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame in 2022.
Early life Paspalj's forester father Jovan's lumber trade job took him from his home village on the slopes of Kozara in Bosanska Krajina to Pljevlja, finding employment at the Lumber Processing Plant (ŠIK Velimir Jakić). Once there he married a local woman, Mileva, and remained. Their first child, son Darko, was born in 1961, five years before Žarko was born in 1966.
During the mid-1970s, when young Žarko was ten years old, his father's job requirements moved the family to Titograd. Žarko took up basketball and soon established himself in the youth system of KK Budućnost.
He considers himself an ethnic Serb from Montenegro, which he believes is "only natural".
Club career
Early days in Titograd Paspalj began his career in 1982. At 16 he moved up to Budućnost's first team where he was part of a talented generation alongside Zdravko Radulović and Luka Pavićević. At the time, Budućnost was a small, unambitious side that had played its first ever top-tier season two years earlier in 1980–81, essentially serving as talent feeder for bigger Yugoslav League clubs like Partizan, Cibona, Jugoplastika, Crvena zvezda, and Bosna.
Not too long after that, Paspalj entered the senior squad. Playing under young head coach Milutin Petrović and alongside seasoned Yugoslav League players such as and the Ivanović brothers (Duško and Dragan), the talented youngster contributed greatly to Budućnost's third place league finish in the 1985–86 season and a playoff semi-final where they lost to eventual champions Zadar.
Partizan years During the summer of 1986 Budućnost sold 20-year-old Paspalj to Partizan. Eighteen-year-old Vlade Divac, another rising star, also joined the club that summer from Sloga. Together with young Sasha Djordjevic, Željko Obradović and more established players like Milenko Savović and Goran Grbović, they won the national title in a final against Crvena zvezda. Paspalj played well enough to earn a spot on the national team of Yugoslavia that won bronze at the EuroBasket 1987 in Athens, Greece. The following year, in 1988, he played a leading role in the side that made it to the Olympic final against the Soviet Union, and marked himself out as a potential star with some fine performances for Yugoslavia at the 1988 McDonald's Open. Also in 1988, Paspalj top-scored for Yugoslavia at the prestigious Acropolis Tournament in Athens, which included 26 points in one half in a tough-fought 104–103 victory against US college side Duke.
Season in the NBA In the summer of 1989, Paspalj became one of the first Europeans to move to the NBA, joining the San Antonio Spurs despite going undrafted one year earlier. He came into the league alongside two Soviets (Šarūnas Marčiulionis and Alexander Volkov) and two more fellow Yugoslavs (Dražen Petrović and Vlade Divac) as they were collectively dubbed the "green card five" by Sports Illustrated.Many Happy Returns;Sports Illustrated, 6 November 1989 At the time they were the only five players in the entire NBA who didn't come up through the American collegiate system. They were thus followed on both sides of the Atlantic with extra interest as the public was curious to see how foreigners fare in the world's best league.It's a Different World, but NBA's Imports Make Progress;Los Angeles Times, 25 February 1990
Paspalj came to the Spurs courtesy of the team's assistant coach Gregg Popovich who noticed the 23-year-old small forward at a warm-up tournament in Dortmund, West Germany in early June 1989 where the Yugoslav national team had been preparing for EuroBasket 1989 later that month. Liking Paspalj's game, Popovich established initial contact with the player through Paspalj's national squad training camp teammate Zoran Jovanović who spoke English having played college ball at Louisiana State. When approached by Popovich about coming to the Spurs, Paspalj immediately expressed interest despite openly admitting to never actually believing anything would come of it as the notion of playing basketball in the NBA seemed vague and far fetched to him. Immediately following the EuroBasket championship—where Yugoslavia won gold in dominating fashion with Paspalj making the All-Tournament Team by contributing 13.4 points per game over five games, all of them blowout wins for the rampant Yugoslavs—the player was even quoted in Yugoslav press rubbishing the idea of going to the NBA while announcing intention of completing his mandatory Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) service before finishing his contract with Partizan and only then transferring abroad to either Italian or Spanish league. Nevertheless, the Spurs acquisition was agreed within weeks with Paspalj on summer vacation in Budva and Popovich reaching out with a US$350,000 gross sum offer for a one-year contract with options to extend afterwards. Basketball player Nebojša Bukumirović, another former NCAA player, also participated as an operational liaison in the subsequent transfer process from Partizan to San Antonio. Still, Paspalj's transfer was not without procedural issues stemming from the fact NBA teams did not pay transfer fees for European players under contract with clubs in Europe, treating their entry into the league within the same legal framework as American collegiate players turning professional. Any transfer fee compensation to European clubs for releasing a player early from his contractual obligations thus fell on the player himself. In Paspalj's case, due to still being under contract with Partizan, the club wanted him to pay US$50,000 for the release but the player refused, claiming supposed earlier unmet stipulations from his contract. Even the club's outgoing head coach Duško Vujošević—himself on his way out of the club—got involved, reportedly counselling Paspalj privately to pay the fee by reasoning that it's "unbecoming of the best forward in Europe to leave his club this way". In the end, the player chose not to pay the fee; instead accepting an agreement whereby KK Partizan retained his rights should he return to Europe.
In 2015, Paspalj recalled his final few summer 1989 days in Yugoslavia before setting off for the U.S.:
1989–90 season Upon arriving to the United States in early July 1989, months before the other four Europeans, and signing a one-year contract for US$350,000, Paspalj was off to Long Beach, California to play Summer Pro League, appearing on a squad alongside Spurs' other new acquisitions David Robinson and Anthony Bowie. Coming back to San Antonio following the Summer League, the player ended up living in the assistant coach Popovich's house for almost a month as he acclimatized to the new surroundings.
Once the season started, Paspalj found himself relegated to the role of 21-year-old rookie Sean Elliott's backup, mostly getting to play garbage time minutes at the end of games. Paspalj reportedly drew head coach Larry Brown's ire by admitting he played "no defense, only offense." He also confessed a weakness for Pizza Hut and Marlboros. Midway through the season, the Spurs organization even resorted to sending Paspalj to a hypnotist in order to curb his smoking habit, though the treatment ended up not succeeding. The highlight of his forgettable season came on 20 January 1990 away at Denver when he scored 13 points during 14 minutes on the floor in a 126–99 loss versus the Nuggets.
Paspalj got cut from the team three days before the 1990 NBA Playoffs started, as the team officials wanted to make roster room for veteran forward Mike Mitchell. Paspalj's overall time in the NBA thus turned out to be far from successful as he featured in only 28 games during the season, scoring a total of 72 points in 181 minutes (2.6 points and minutes per game) of action. However, Paspalj did develop a cult following among fans, evidenced by the Terry Cummings-penned song "The Mark of Zarko", which was sung to the tune of "The Mark of Zorro." Local press in San Antonio also took to him due to the folksy manner in which he conducted his media appearances with stream-of-consciousness answers and quotable sound bytes.
Summing up his season with the Spurs and life in the United States, Paspalj remarked in 2015:
The 1989–90 season did have a golden lining for Paspalj as he was an integral part of the Yugoslav team which took gold at the Goodwill Games in Seattle, beating the United States in the final, and at the World Championships in Argentina, with Paspalj leading all scorers in the final against the Soviet Union with 20 points.
Back in Partizan for a season In 1990 Paspalj returned home to Partizan. The club, much like the player, was coming off an extremely poor season in which they failed to earn a European spot. Also returning, following an unsuccessful season of his own in Spain, was Paspalj's mentor Duško Vujošević. Seen as a reunion from a few years earlier, but this time without the rigours of competing in Europe, the season was shaping up as the one in which Partizan could finally overcome its Jugoplastika hex after the Split club was left without its talismanic coach Boža Maljković and its key player Dino Rađa.
Paspalj became the league's top-scorer for 1990–91, leading the team alongside 23-year-old Đorđević and 20-year-old Danilović to the second-place regular season finish before being swept 3-0 by Split (now renamed Pop 84). Nonetheless, the overall season performance earned Paspalj a high-profile transfer to Greek club Olympiacos in the late summer of 1991.
Olympiacos Paspalj's signing for the Piraeus club was a direct consequence of its takeover by the Greek businessman and investor Sokratis Kokkalis. Throwing his considerable financial means behind the operation, the magnate wanted to turn Olympiacos, a club that hadn't won the Greek title since 1978, languishing in mediocrity for years, into a European power. Also signing the same summer was head coach Giannis Ioannidis who had dominated Greek basketball throughout the 1980s, winning seven national titles as head coach of Aris along with several EuroLeague Final Four appearances. Paspalj's arrival to Athens in September 1991, just over two months after helping the Yugoslav national team successfully defend its EuroBasket title, received major attention in the city with many Olympiacos fans greeting him at Ellinikon Airport. Being the first foreign superstar to join the Greek league, the 25-year-old's arrival was seen by many as the harbinger of a new era for Greek club basketball.Zarko Paspalj, the man who changed the Greek League;EuroLeague, 2 December 2012
1991–92 season