Željko Obradović

Želimir "Željko" Obradović (Serbian Cyrillic: Желимир "Жељко" Обрадовић, pronounced [ʒɛ̌limiːr ʒêːʎko obrǎːdoʋitɕ]; born 9 March 1960) is a Serbian professional basketball coach and former professional player who was most recently the head coach for Partizan of the Basketball League of Serbia (KLS), the ABA League and the EuroLeague. Widely regarded as the greatest coach in European basketball history and outside the NBA, Obradović has won a total of 66 club titles and honours over the course of his 30-year-long coaching career, including a record nine EuroLeague titles with five different clubs, along with 18 EuroLeague Final Four appearances. In addition to his success at club level, he has also won major trophies as head coach of the Yugoslavia national team (present-day Serbia), most notably winning the gold medals at the 1997 EuroBasket and the 1998 FIBA World Championship. Among his individual coaching awards, he has won two FIBA European Coach of the Year awards, three EuroLeague Coach of the Year awards, four Greek Basket League Best Coach awards, the ABA League Coach of the Season award, two Manager of the Year in Turkey awards, the Best Sports Coach in Greece award and the Ivković Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2008, he was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors, making the list as one of the ten head coaches that were chosen.

Early life Obradović was born on 9 March 1960, in Čačak, PR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia.

Borac Čačak (1978–1984)
Obradović started his club career as a basketball player with Borac Čačak, in their youth system.
During the 1977–78 season, then eighteen-year-old Obradović, got his first taste of senior men's team basketball at Borac, as he appeared in six Yugoslav First Federal League games during the season, and contributed a total of 3 points. After eventually establishing himself as the team's starting point guard, he stayed with the club until 1984.

Partizan (1984–1991)
Obradović joined Partizan in 1984. He was brought in by Partizan's incoming head coach Moka Slavnić and vice president Dragan Kićanović, both recent retirees who had starred on the Yugoslav national team throughout the 1970s as a legendary guard duo.
In Obradović's third season with the team, Partizan won the 1986–87 season title of the Yugoslav League. In the following season, they reached the 1987–88 season edition of the European Champions Cup's Final Four. Finally, they won the 1989 Yugoslav Cup and the Korać Cup's championship of the 1988–89 season. During his time at Partizan, Obradović established himself as one of the best and most reliable point guards in Yugoslavia's top-level league.

National team
Obradović was a member of the junior national teams of Yugoslavia. With Yugoslav under-19 national team, he played at the 1979 FIBA Under-19 World Championship.
He was also a member of the senior Yugoslav national team. With Yugoslavia's senior national team, he won a silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics, and a gold medal at the 1990 FIBA World Championship.

Coaching career
Obradović's relevancy as a professional club basketball coach is confirmed by the collection of titles he has acquired in his twenty-eight-year career as a head coach, including a record 9 European-wide premiere level EuroLeague championships (won with five different teams), a record 14 EuroLeague Finals appearances, a record 18 EuroLeague Final Four appearances, two European-wide secondary level Saporta Cup championships, and numerous national domestic league championships and national cups.

Partizan (1991–1993)
Obradović's coaching career began quite suddenly in the summer of 1991 while he was still an active thirty-one-year-old Partizan player getting ready for EuroBasket 1991 with the Yugoslav national team. Selected and coached by Dušan Ivković, the 1991 national squad was to be captained by Obradović—the oldest player among the assembled group. However, after finishing the training camp in Poreč and coming back to Belgrade to sleep over before leaving in the morning for a preparation friendly tournament in Dortmund, Germany, Obradović got called in for a meeting with the Partizan management—club president Radojica Nikčević, vice-president Dragan Kićanović, as well as board members Đorđe "Siske" Čolović, Milorad "Miketa" Đurić, and Dragan Todorić—who convinced him to take over the Partizan head coaching job, which entailed retiring from playing effective immediately thus giving up a chance to captain the national team at the upcoming EuroBasket.
The idea was to have Obradović, a debutante head coach, work under the guidance of experienced elder statesman of Yugoslav basketball, sixty-seven-year-old professor Aleksandar Nikolić, whose coaching advisory services were soon secured by Kićanović and the club management. Also joining the front office in the technical director capacity was another fresh retiree from playing, thirty-one-year-old Milenko Savović, Obradović's longtime teammate at Partizan, who had spent the previous 1990–91 season playing for Vojvodina.
In the 1991–92 season, Partizan had a 20–2 record in the 1991–92 YUBA League regular season. In the playoffs, they progressed to the final, winning the best-of-five series 3–0 against Crvena zvezda. It also won the Yugoslav Cup in 1992, beating Bosna 105–70 in the final game. In European competition, Obradović led the young squad to become the champions of 1991–92 FIBA European Leag