The old professor Svetislav Pesic did it again and put Serbia in the final of the Basketball World Cup, the final phase of which is being played in Manila. The 74-year-old coach deactivated Catalan Jordi Fernández’s Canada and led his team to victory 95-86. The Serbians are already waiting for the winner of the second semi-final, which the United States and Germany will play this Friday (2:40 p.m.).
For the former Barça coach in two stages, it means returning as coach to a World Cup final 21 years later. Then, in Indianapolis, in 2002, he led Serbia to the title, which defeated Argentina.
Canada came in as one of the sensations of the championship, but from the beginning of the match Serbia took the lead, with advantages that exceeded 10 points and that they maintained or expanded until the end.
Pesic’s stiletto was Atlanta Hawks forward Bogdan Bogdanovic, author of 23 points, and who became the top three-pointer in World Cup history, surpassing another acquaintance of Pesic’s like the former Blaugrana Juan Carlos Navarro.
With more than four decades on the bench, the coach has coached some of the greatest players in the Balkans such as Divac, Djordjevic, Radja, Bodiroga, Kukoc, Bogdanovic and Stojakovic. Like Serbia, Pesic always returns, since his debut with the board dates back to 1980, when he took charge of Bosna Sarajevo. When this happened, his colleague on the Canadian bench Jordi Fernández still had two years left to be born.
This Friday, Serbia taught a lesson and Barrett’s 23 points, Brooks’ 16 and Alexander’s 15 were useless against an opponent that played more as a team and had five players with 10 or more points.
That, collective good work, is always the objective of the technicians of the school of the former Yugoslavia. “In European basketball there are changes in the rhythms of the game, we don’t just shoot triples, triples and more triples,” reasons Pesic, who also has a title as a coach…of Germany, which he led to victory in the Eurobasket in 1993.
