By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
After five Eurobaskets and two FIBA World Cups, Nikola Vucevic officially announced his retirement from the Montenegrin national team, in which he was the anchor for more than a decade.
His end was an upset by Great Britain, but the Chicago Bulls‘ big man has no regrets.
As the 35-year-old Vucevic said, “It sucks for me to finish this way; it would have been great to get to the next round and play in Riga, but it is what it is. In the end, I want to thank everyone, my teammates, the coaches, the federation, and of course, the fans. I will miss playing for the national team; it’s a great honor to play. I wish I could finish it differently; however, now it’s time for the next generation to leave their mark”.
Thinking about his career with the national team, Vucevic, despite the last bitter taste, is proud: “There’s a lot of pride; we are a very small country. We don’t have a lot of players, and for us, every time we got into a big tournament, it was a huge success, and we always tried to do our best and represent our country the best way. In some tournaments we did well, in some others we didn’t, and that’s how it goes. I am very proud that I had the chance to represent my country in all these tournaments, and very happy to play with all the guys I had. With some of them, we are close friends now, and that’s something that you have for the rest of your life. We are all very proud; we wish it could have ended differently, but that’s sports. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s not”.
While his first major tournament was Eurobasket 2011, when he was playing behind Nikola Pekovic, Vucevic puts the start of his senior national team adventure one year earlier: “It was 2010, it was the qualifiers for Eurobasket. I ended up not playing in any of the games, but I did attend the camp, and then I got back to USC, and I was at college. I was young at the time, we had a lot of other guys, veteran guys that deserved to play in front of me, but it was a good experience to practice with all those players, to learn from them. My first Eurobasket was in 2011 in Lithuania”.
So what does the future hold for Montenegro? As coach Bosko Radovic said things are not going to be easy: “We must do a lot of things, and we are in a bad moment, because three of our young players who are supposed to play for the national team the next couple of years, they want to NCAA, and starting from November, for the FIBA World Cup qualifiers, we must change a lot of things”.
And while Vucevic has faith in the next generation, he also understands the problems that young talent going to the NCAA will create for European basketball: “Every generation runs its course, and this one was one of the best we had. We also had good results in the U20 and U18 teams. Especially the Eurobasket in 2022 and the World Cup 2023 were good results for us. It’s time for new players to come in. We have some good young talent, guys who can play, but some of them went to the NCAA, and I don’t know if they will be available for qualifiers, and that’s going to be a problem for basketball in Europe. More and more young guys are going to be there, and I think it’s also something for clubs in Europe to look at, maybe get more opportunities for young guys to play. Now you get the chance to play in the NCAA, get a lot of money, it’s totally understandable. I went through this system, and I think it’s a very good system if you get to the right coach and the right school. Young guys have to be careful now; they should not just go after the money, but find the right situation, because it is a lot of money, but if you get it at 18, 19, or 20, and then it’s nothing, it goes away quickly. So we will see how it goes”.
Photo credit: FIBA
