Legendary Serbian Basketball Coach Duda Ivkovic Dies At 77.
One of the greatest coaches of Yugoslav, Serbian and European basketball, Dusan Duda Ivkovic, passed away on Thursday, drawing expressions of sadness from fans and colleagues across Europe.
One of Serbia’s top basketball coaches, Dusan Duda Ivkovic, has passed away aged 77, the president of Radnicki Belgrade BC Goran Kalinic told Sport Klub TV on Thursday.
Fans and colleagues across Europe have all expressed their sadness and appreciation for Ivkovic’s life work.
Ivkovic was born in Belgrade on October 29, 1943. In 2008, he was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors. In 2017 he was elected to the FIBA Hall of Fame and was named a EuroLeague Basketball Legend.
Ivkovic started his career as a basketball player at senior level, from 1958 to 1968 with then-First Federal Basketball League club Radnicki Belgrade. As coach, he led Partizan, Aris, Radnicki Belgrade, Sibenik, Vojvodina, PAOK, Panionis, Olympiacos, AEK, CSKA, Dinamo Moscow and Anadolu Efes.
He was one of the most successful European coaches of all time, and the most successful selector of the Yugoslav national basketball team at the European Championships, where he won medals in Zagreb in 1989, Rome in 1991 and Athens in 1995.
He was also the selector of the Serbian national basketball team from 2008 to 2013, during which time it won silver at the European Championship and was fourth at the 2010 World Cup.
He finished his coaching career in 2016, and led a show match as a sign of his farewell against Olympiacos on September 20, 2017.
With the national team, he won three European gold and one silver, one world gold, silver at the Olympic Games and a gold at the Universiade. At club level, he won the Euroleague twice, the Radivoje Korac Cup, the Raymond Saporte Cup, the ULEB Cup, was the champion of Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia with his clubs, and won the Cup and Super Cup competitions in the same countries.
He recently got a role in Partizan BC after hiring Zeljko Obradovic as a member of the Partizan BC Foundation, which was established to help endangered basketball legends.
