"Dušan said it, and I was unworthy then": How Vlada Jovanović Led Spartak to the Serbian Championship Title: "They thought I was on a trip to Palić"

“We celebrated a bit in Niš, and we'll celebrate again now, not just for ourselves, but primarily for the entire city, which has given us tremendous support over the three or four years since this 'new' Spartak emerged. Summing up impressions, I suppose that can't happen so quickly. I'll certainly have plenty of time during the summer, between seasons, to reflect on my thoughts, not just regarding the playoff or Final Four conclusion, but the entire season. New obligations have practically already arrived; we need to think about the next season, preparations, players...”

“I agree with that; first, the temperament isn't the same, the people aren't the same, even if the temperament isn't the same, definitely. I came from a region where both victory and defeat, and sport in general, are viewed differently. Here, everything is an octave lower, which doesn't bother me at all. Things here, in both directions, happen a bit slower. When something bad happens, they aren't overly critical, and when something good happens, they don't get overly euphoric too quickly. However, three years ago, when I came to negotiate with President Boban Jaramazović, he convinced me that there was a sporting spark in Subotica and that it was crucial for us to collectively give them a reason to grow as an audience, not just in numbers but also in how they support us. We went through a very difficult period. My first game here was against Pančevo, three years ago, in the KLS. Maybe there were 200 people, of whom perhaps 80 were relatives, girlfriends, and so on; I don't think anyone bought a ticket. So, from that moment to this last game, where two buses came to watch the game in Niš, it seems like a short period, but the journey we've made is truly enormous. They are a 'quiet' support; they support their team, Spartak, in a totally different way, never insulting the opponent. They know how to applaud a good move by the home team, but they are never ashamed, nor does anyone prevent them from supporting or applauding a good move by the opponent. It's something completely different.”

“Nowhere is it easy to work. Naturally, Partizan and Zvezda create extraordinary pressure in every aspect, and fans practically expect nothing but victory. Only victory matters, and results are viewed solely through wins or losses. Subotica is different. However, again, a big club like Partizan brings out both the best and the worst in you; the question is how you handle that pressure. If that pressure helps you be the best version of yourself every day, both in training and in games, that's excellent and possible. However, that pressure is also truly immense. And I'm not talking about opposing fans; that's the least of the problems, truly the least, as people who have worked at Partizan and Zvezda know very well. The biggest problem is meeting the expectations of the home fans because they are very critical, very demanding, and accustomed to great results. Partizan is a huge club, not to mention regional titles and the EuroLeague. It's very demanding, but if that energy or pressure is turned the wrong way, it can practically break you, and then you're no longer yourself. Here, it's somewhat different. Public or fan pressure won't make a better version of you; you'll have to do that yourself. And that's fine with me. In both cases, my job as a coach is to adapt to the environment. I like it here; I really love the crowd; it's a small community. I think the evolution of my presence in Subotica has gone from people greeting me as Vlada Jovanović, Partizan's coach, for the first year, maybe even a year and a half. They would take pictures with me, probably thinking I was on a trip to Palić, not knowing I worked here at all. I'd sometimes walk through the street, Dudova šuma is beautiful, and passersby would say, 'Here's coach Vlada, the Partizan fan, let's take a picture.' But now, for the last year and a half, or two, I'm already recognized as Spartak's coach, so we've come a long way in that segment too.”

“Perhaps the perception of others towards us has changed, but our goals and everything we've done over the past three or four years have practically always been the same. Spartak wouldn't have folded even if we hadn't won this title, or even if we hadn't won the ABA 2 league and moved up to ABA 1. We knew very well what our path was and the process we followed for the last three years. The way we made joint decisions – Boban, myself, and the club management – those decisions were always aimed at making this club better each year, not necessarily champions. We didn't think about that, because when you set such a high goal, if you don't achieve it, and out of 18, 12, or 14 clubs, only one can be champion, it means the other 17 should fold. We won't allow that; we won't start with apocalyptic ideas, and for Spartak and Subotica, the idea of being champions or nothing would certainly be fatal. The process, the path, and the decisions we made – that's what brought us here, under certain circumstances, of course. Next year, our perception of ourselves won't change at all. I think the perception of others towards us will change, which I believe we've earned, in the best sense. We've been ABA League playoff participants twice, and yet we were a rookie team last year. This year, we were also first-time participants in the BCL. We passed the second round, and in the play-in phase, we lost to Karditsa, but even there, we made some progress. I think that very perception of others towards us will make our job harder; it's normal that people will take us seriously, just as we take all opponents seriously, but it will also make things a little easier. Now, in my opinion, we are on the basketball map; we've somewhat established ourselves as a small but very serious club, with an established system, with a clear idea of what it wants from season to season, with local staff – when I say local, I'm talking about the region – and with carefully selected foreign players, in terms of quality, but above all, in terms of human qualities. I would like us to be recognized that way because it will certainly make our job much easier in the coming years to have both quality players and quality people in the squad, and for some results that may come – I don't just mean winning something or winning a game – to come a little easier. It was very difficult to emerge from complete basketball anonymity. You know about Spartak, but you didn't know what they had been playing for however many years, not to belittle anyone who, at that time, managed to keep it alive until President Jaramazović arrived. He, due to an emotional connection with the club where he spent his youth, came and gave it artificial respiration.”

“Just a small introduction – the season was quite turbulent, and I was very happy and satisfied that we made it to the end and that we were competitive, considering that the Final Four always gives an opportunity to teams that are, on paper, somewhat weaker than the favorites we had there – I'm talking about Partizan and Zvezda – it gives you a chance to perhaps dream. However, it was more luck that we were there and that we would have the opportunity to play another game, at that moment against Zvezda. That game against Zvezda itself, I think, was of very high quality. They entered very motivated for reasons they already have, let's not talk about that, with five quality foreign players, with two of our celebrated national team players, a more than respectable lineup for a team like ours. But when I saw that my guys were determined to compete, when in difficult moments they found ways to stay afloat and fight for 40 minutes against a very high-quality, motivated opponent, and finally to win that game in the way we did, I would say that, in addition to the basketball aspect where the game had quality, it also brought out that team character in us, which gave me hope and conviction that we were ready for the trophy.”

“I don't count those victories that way; I mean, each one helps build character against teams stronger than you. However, that doesn't just happen in Serbia or the ABA League; it happens everywhere. Teams like Partizan and Zvezda, who play in the EuroLeague, constantly talk about the physical component, but the mental state of those players, having to give their all every two days and go out on the court against opponents like us, who are extremely motivated to beat a better opponent, and be at 100 percent, that's not easy at all. Whether it's an easier or harder job for the coach is now up for discussion. If you're preparing for a game against an opponent of your quality, you certainly have to include a mental preparation aspect, that you must not allow your players to underestimate the opponent for a single moment. Aside from basketball, which still needs to be prepared through training and meetings. When you play against a stronger opponent, that preparation might be superfluous because it's really pointless if you're playing against a better team or better players, which they are on paper, playing in the EuroLeague, not to be motivated to show that you, as a person, and your team can play against quality opponents like them. That shouldn't be a problem, but that extreme motivation can also be fatal, and you can burn out along the way. Then the coach has to do his job, through meetings, to show that they are also human on the other side, no matter how good basketball players they are, but they are primarily flesh and blood and have their weaknesses. Through meetings and preparations, you have to highlight the qualities of your players and your team through previous games, either against that direct opponent or against someone else. So, a balance must be struck, so that they come out balanced and deliver the quality of basketball they can, whether playing against weaker opponents, rivals of the same quality, or stronger ones.”

“It is possible. I mean, I'm talking about algorithms, I'm talking about statistics, I'm talking about numbers, and it's really much easier now than 10 or 20 years ago when I was at Partizan. But if it's easy to find statistical parameters – and I'm not talking about mere game statistics now, but you can literally find every parameter a player can have, I'm talking about basketball, I'm talking about physical status, anthropology, you can find everything, literally – if all that is available, then you can also find out what kind of person someone is. Make one phone call, and usually someone will praise them, and then you have to be, and I learned this from my own mistakes, you have to be very sensitive to what people say. It's very difficult to find, you really need a friend on the other end of the line, phone, or internet, who will tell you: 'Don't take him.' But since you can't have friends everywhere, given that people come from different parts of the world, a colleague won't lie to you, but it's not nice for you to call me and for me to speak ill of someone, so you have to be very sensitive, to listen to every comma. A colleague won't say anything bad, but they might say 'but,' and then something, well, you have to analyze very carefully what they said. In this century, where everything is available, that is also available. My mother is a big YouTube fan, and she can literally see the quality of every player, although she doesn't watch that, she watches history (laughs). But no one uses YouTube more than coaches, and no one watches highlights anymore; that's, I think, a long-gone era. Today you can watch literally every game, you can watch every timeout, you can watch a player, after a bad shot or bad defense, when the coach calls for a substitution, how he goes to the bench, how he talks to the coach, where he sits, where he walks, whether he throws a towel or a bottle because he's frustrated, because he understands he made a bad play, or he's frustrated because he thinks the coach wronged him by benching him. And that's enough. That's one clip, and it's enough to put it in a folder. I'm not saying everyone has their market, everyone has their place under this basketball sun, but now, at my age, I know my weaknesses. One must learn to live with what one can and what one cannot. I can work with people like I did this year, and they gave me, and players don't always give this, the right to coach them. They gave me the right to lead them, and that's a privilege in this job. It's truly a privilege.”

“I was inexperienced as a coach, and relatively young. I was 32 when I joined the first team; until then, I had worked in junior categories. I started as practically the second assistant. My path has been very long and winding, just like our season. It's normal that my parents, first and foremost, are responsible for who I am in terms of personality, but as a coach, given that I didn't have much experience working, or any experience with seniors at all, there were two people up to that point who influenced me. I probably, given that I embraced all of it, was quite impressionable and susceptible to the things I saw and adopted them as my own, even though they weren't. First and foremost, Aco Janjić, who was a long-time coach, a professor at '20. oktobar' Elementary School. The famous Aco Janjić, anyone who ever shot a basketball in Belgrade in the junior categories knows the famous professor. I worked with him for five, six, seven years. He was the first to instill in me an incredible discipline, dedication, and passion for the job; he adored basketball, he adored children. The second person was Duško Vujošević. Coming to Dušan in 2005 elevated everything to a level no one was prepared for. No one is prepared; today, there's no chance you'll find anyone like that, no way, and even then, no one was prepared. Neither was I. It was a serious struggle until it took hold and until I broke. Adapting to his way of working – that was too demanding. How he interacted with people – impossible for me. How he thought about basketball – and I'm not talking about tactics – that was unattainable. Truly, it was unattainable. It was incredible for me. Although I am very diligent, meticulous, I'm never late, I can say that about myself, it was all so difficult for me, and it took me time to even embrace that idea. However, after a certain period, now I can't imagine myself, I can't imagine my view of basketball, I can't imagine anything related to basketball, other than how we worked. Everything else seems unserious to me, and everything else is just a compromise, of which there are plenty now in basketball and in life, in everything. You can make compromises in a million things, but not in sports, because if you don't do something, you haven't done it. If something needs to be done well, you have to do it a million times; if you do it three times less, you're still not fully in it.”

“Regarding the players, the physical aspect, I'm talking about that training, it was very demanding. But professionally, I found it very difficult to accept his relationships with people, with players, with staff, and so on, because for me at that moment, it was simply too much. Too much, because at that moment he demanded all or nothing, and that nothing meant you weren't there. And there was only one way, as he would say: 'My way or the highway,' meaning, only one or none other. He and I eventually, from my point of view, became friends, but there was no democracy there. There was no democracy in any segment. His demands in all aspects were very high. Almost all those people, Novica Veličković, Uroš Tripković, Milenko Tepić, and some who perhaps didn't reach a higher level, it was very difficult for them. They were children, but precisely because they embraced all of it, and they had to, there was no other option, they achieved what they achieved, even though all talented players came, there's no dispute. After a certain period, Dušan left for CSKA, and Saša Danilović promoted me to Partizan's head coach. My first reaction was that I wouldn't function in terms of relationships the way he did. However, you quickly, very quickly, get a slap, and it's not just a slap, it's a huge slap. You think it can be done differently – it can't. You can function however you want outside of a sports collective, but in a sports collective – although that's largely lost today – there are rules, and those rules must be respected for results to come. No one diminishes anyone's rights, but some things must be done. He always had that saying: 'Everything is inaccessible to unworthy eyes,' probably from some book, and at that time, my level, and perhaps my personality, knowledge, and everything, was not worthy of all that. Later, through experience, I went through various situations that forced me to have a flashback, to reset and think in a way, how acceptable it was, how Dušan thought.”

“It can, but I don't know if we have the time and the courage. I think when we all hit a wall together, this entire basketball public, then we will realize that we need a coach like Dušan again. I'm sure of it. Now, if we don't want that, or if we're not smart enough, or if, after all, we think it can be done differently, well, go ahead, let's see how far we'll push it.”