Vlade Divac is a Serbian professional basketball executive and former player who was most recently the vice president of basketball operations and general manager of the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association.
57 Facts About Vlade Divac
2.
Vlade Divac was among the first group of European basketball players to transfer to the NBA in the late 1980s and was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors.
3.
Vlade Divac is one of seven players in NBA history to record 13,000 points, 9,000 rebounds, 3,000 assists, and 1,500 blocked shots, along with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Pau Gasol.
4.
Vlade Divac was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
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Vlade Divac is a humanitarian, helping children in his native country of Serbia and in Africa.
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In 2013, Vlade Divac received an honor from the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.
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Vlade Divac began playing basketball in his home town Prijepolje for the team KK Elan.
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Vlade Divac began his professional career in Yugoslavia playing for Sloga from Kraljevo, and was immediately noted for scoring 27 points against Crvena zvezda.
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Vlade Divac had an unusual style compared to most other centers of his generation: despite his height, he possessed good mobility, had good control of the ball, and was a decent shooter.
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Vlade Divac earned a reputation for flopping, or deceiving the officials into calling a foul on the other team by purposely falling to the floor upon contact with an opposing player.
11.
Brown claimed that Vlade Divac might have been the best of all time at flopping.
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Vlade Divac freely admitted doing so, adding that he usually did it when he felt like the officials had missed some calls and owed him.
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However, when the NBA instituted anti-flopping penalties in 2012, Vlade Divac expressed his support for such rules, stating that he felt players after him were "overdo[ing] it" with respect to flopping.
14.
On July 1,1996, Vlade Divac was traded to the Charlotte Hornets for the draft rights to Kobe Bryant.
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Alongside Glen Rice, Anthony Mason, and Muggsy Bogues, Vlade Divac helped the Hornets to a franchise record 54 regular season wins that season.
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That postseason, Vlade Divac averaged 18 points, 8.7 rebounds, and 2 blocks per game in a first round loss to the New York Knicks.
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The issue of playing for the hated cross-town rival reignited several years later, when Vlade Divac returned to KK Partizan as club president.
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On January 22,1999, Vlade Divac signed a six-year, $62.5 million contract as a free agent with the Sacramento Kings, where he played for six seasons alongside fellow countryman Peja Stojakovic.
19.
The Lakers, following a defeat in the NBA Finals, had traded away or released most of their players, including Shaquille O'Neal, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Derek Fisher, and more; Vlade Divac was supposed to help fill that void.
20.
However, Vlade Divac suffered back problems and could not play most of the season, and even when he returned, could only play about nine minutes per game, averaging 2.3 points per game and 2.1 rebounds per game in 15 games, he played 8 games early in the season and 7 more in the final month of the season.
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On July 14,2005,37-year-old Vlade Divac announced his retirement, ending his 16-year NBA and 22-year professional basketball career.
22.
Vlade Divac accepted a position with the Lakers as a European liaison to help with scouting overseas.
23.
Over his 16 years in the NBA, Vlade Divac earned over $93 million in salary.
24.
In summer 1986, at 18, right after signing for KK Partizan, Vlade Divac debuted for the senior Yugoslavia national basketball team at the 1986 FIBA World Championship in Madrid, on invitation by the head coach Kresimir Cosic.
25.
Yugoslavia tried to hold the ball for the remaining time, opting to continue the play with throw-ins instead of free throws following fouls, but with only 14 seconds left, Vlade Divac committed a double dribble, the Soviets were awarded the ball, and tied the score with another three-pointer.
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The next year, Vlade Divac participated in the team that took the gold at the 1987 FIBA Junior World Championship in Bormio, Italy.
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Vlade Divac claims that he told the man that he should not be waving that flag, since this was a win for Yugoslavia.
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Vlade Divac has stated that he did not mean it as an act against Croatia and he would have taken away a Serbian flag if a Serb fan had done the same.
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In 2002, Vlade Divac was part of the team that won the FIBA World Cup in Indianapolis, beating Argentina in the final and the USA earlier on.
30.
In late 2000, following the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic whose policies Vlade Divac had been openly critical of throughout mid-to-late 1990s, Vlade Divac and former teammate Predrag Danilovic took over their former club KK Partizan.
31.
Vlade Divac became the club's president while Danilovic took the vice-president role.
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Freshly retired from playing, Danilovic was actually running the club's day-to-day operations since Vlade Divac was still very actively involved with the Sacramento Kings at the time.
33.
In October 2005, right after ending his playing career with the Los Angeles Lakers, Vlade Divac was hired as the Lakers' European scout, reporting directly to the team's general manager Mitch Kupchak.
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In June 2006, through his friendship with Predrag Mijatovic, Vlade Divac linked up with Ramon Calderon as part of the lawyer's candidate bid for the presidency of Real Madrid.
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When Calderon closely won the club elections on July 2,2006, Vlade Divac was announced as the head of operations at Real Madrid basketball club though the scope of his job description soon got reduced to consulting duties as president Calderon's adviser for basketball and club's international coordinator.
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In October 2008, it was announced that Vlade Divac would have a political advisory role within the Serbian government as the sports, diaspora, and humanitarian advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister and Internal Affairs Minister Ivica Dacic.
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Vlade Divac was nominated in 2000 as Yugoslavia's candidate for the Sport Commission of the International Olympic Committee in spring 2000.
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In February 2009, Vlade Divac ran for the presidency of the Olympic Committee of Serbia against incumbent president Ivan Curkovic.
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Vlade Divac won the race after Curkovic withdrew just before the scheduled voting.
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Vlade Divac stated that he is not happy with the decision of the IOC, but could not have prevented it as it had already been made, and said he would accept it "in the interest of the athletes".
41.
On May 9,2017, Vlade Divac was succeeded by Serbian former basketball coach Bozidar Maljkovic as the president of the Olympic Committee of Serbia.
42.
In early March 2015, Vlade Divac was hired by the Sacramento Kings as their vice president of basketball and franchise operations.
43.
Later that week, Vlade Divac summoned Cousins and Karl to a private counseling session.
44.
Vlade Divac was promoted to the Kings' vice president of basketball operations and general manager on August 31,2015.
45.
Early into the team's offseason, in mid April 2016, the Kings organization fired head coach Karl, a decision made by Vlade Divac who had reportedly been pushing for it for months.
46.
Shortly thereafter, on August 14,2020, Vlade Divac stepped down as general manager.
47.
Vlade Divac has been involved in many non-basketball endeavors while still actively playing in the NBA, and more so after he retired.
48.
Vlade Divac is an active restaurant investor in the Sacramento, California area.
49.
Vlade Divac made an agreement with small shareholders to take over the company by means of registering a new company with joint capital, which would increase the share capital.
50.
Vlade Divac is a humanitarian worker, focusing on aid to children worldwide and refugees in his home country.
51.
In late 2007, Vlade Divac founded a humanitarian organization, "You Can Too", with the goal of restoring abandoned homes in villages throughout Serbia and Africa, thereby providing shelter for homeless refugees.
52.
From September 21 to 23,2007, Vlade Divac organized an official farewell from his active basketball career in his hometown Prijepolje and Belgrade, simultaneously promoting the "You Can Too" campaign.
53.
In Serbia, throughout his playing career, Vlade Divac regularly appeared in commercials pitching products ranging from Atlas Beer to Societe Generale mortgage credit plans.
54.
Vlade Divac appeared in a national TV commercial in the United States alongside former NBA star Darryl Dawkins for Taco Bell.
55.
Vlade Divac threw a ball into the audience, which marked the beginning of televoting.
56.
Vlade Divac appears in Boris Malagurski's documentary film The Weight of Chains, in which he talks about the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
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Vlade Divac is fluent in 3 languages, Serbian, Russian and English.