Nikola Vucevic making the All-Star Game is a family achievement (original) (raw)

The Amway Center lights dimmed. Dressed in their blue warmups, Nikola Vucevic and his Orlando Magic teammates lined up side-by-side for pregame ceremonies. Vucevic has experienced the same routine countless times before, but that moment felt different. Butterflies churned in his stomach.

As public address announcer Paul Porter introduced that night’s “hometown hero,” a longtime Daytona Beach Fire Department employee, Vucevic kept peeking toward the row behind the scorer’s table. There, Magic chief communications officer Joel Glass and director of communications George Galante watched the announcement of the 2018-19 Eastern Conference All-Star reserves on a TV monitor.

Careful not to disrespect the hometown hero, Vucevic kept averting his eyes from Glass and Galante.

Then, all of a sudden, he heard Glass shout an emphatic “Yes!”

Vucevic looked over again and saw Glass and Galante smiling. Galante held his fist held high in the air.

Vucevic had to be sure.

“Yes?” he mouthed.

“You’re in!” Galante yelled.

In that overwhelming moment, on the verge of tears of joy, Vucevic had to share his happiness with two of the most important people in his life. He turned left, glanced into Section 113 across from the Magic bench, and signaled to his mom and dad, Ljiljana and Borislav Vucevic.

They beamed.

Now, two weeks later, with the 2019 NBA All-Star Game set for Sunday in Charlotte, N.C., Nikola still delights in his good fortune — that he earned an All-Star nod, that his parents experienced his selection with him, that the Magic are in a playoff chase and, most important of all, that he and his wife, Nikoleta, have a 2-month-old son.

“It’s been a great, great period for our family, for sure,” Nikola said this week. “Obviously, the birth of my son, that’s the best thing ever. That’s something that you can never top.

“On the professional side, they know how much I’ve put into this. They know how much I gave up for this. They know how much basketball means to me and that I live my life through the game of basketball.”

Basketball connects everybody in the Vucevic family. For them, it is more than a passion. It is a common profession. Ljiljana and Borislav played professional basketball in Europe, and Borislav’s pro career spanned 24 years, prompting the family to move from the Balkans to Switzerland and to Belgium before they finally settled in their home country, Montenegro.

Nikolas father, Borislav “Savo” Vucevic is a former player in Europe and is still the head coach of JL Bourg, a team based in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, that plays in the Pro A league. (Manuel Blondeau/Icon Sport via Getty Images)

Nikoleta Vucevic’s brother is former NBA player Sasha Pavlovic.

And now, Nikola Vucevic, a 7-foot center, carries the family mantle.

The family sacrificed to help his basketball dreams come true, and those sacrifices have made his successes even sweeter.

In 2007, when he was 16 years old and spoke almost no English, he moved away from his family in Montenegro to spend his senior year of high school at Stoneridge Preparatory School in Simi Valley, Calif. The goals were simple: learn English, earn a scholarship to an American university and ultimately play professional basketball in Europe. The NBA was an aspiration, but even to him, reaching the NBA did not seem realistic.

Stoneridge Prep welcomed him, taught him English and developed his basketball skills. But there were two or three occasions early in the school year that Vucevic felt so homesick that he called his parents and told them he wanted to come home. He and Nikoleta were already dating, and he missed her. He also missed his friends. And the U.S. was strange — so strange that even ordering a soda at McDonald’s felt traumatic.

Fortunately for him, his mom and dad knew exactly what to say. They reminded him that he went to the United States for his own good. And within five minutes of starting those phone conversations, Vucevic felt better.

He stuck it out. The University of Southern California offered him a scholarship, and during his sophomore year there, he played well enough against highly touted prospects that he thought he might become a decent NBA role player.

Nikola Vucevic was 18 years old during his freshman season at USC, here facing Michigan State in the 2009 NCAA Tournament. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)

After his junior year of college, he declared for the 2011 NBA Draft. The Philadelphia 76ers picked him 16th overall. The Sixers traded him after his rookie year to Orlando in the four-team deal in which the Magic sent Dwight Howard to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Vucevic flourished with the Magic even though the team struggled. During the 2015-16 season, with Scott Skiles working as Orlando’s coach, Vucevic thought he had a chance to make the Eastern Conference All-Star team but he narrowly missed. He thought there would be other chances.

But Skiles quit after one year, and the Magic signed center Bismack Biyombo to a four-year contract worth $17 million per season. Early in the season, with Frank Vogel as the coach, Vucevic was moved to the bench so Biyombo could start.

Vucevic was so upset that it was the first, and only, time he ever seriously considered asking for a trade.

His parents, his wife and his agent, Rade Filipovich, urged him to be patient.

Vucevic took their advice. He never asked for a trade and he soon regained his starting job.

And now he is thriving again.

Vucevic is having a career year on the court, averaging 20.5 points, 12.1 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. (Kim Klement / USA Today)

Steve Clifford, Vogel’s successor, has made Vucevic the focal point of the Orlando offense. He finished the Magic’s victory Thursday night averaging 20.5 points, 12.1 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game. He also has made 38.0 percent of his 3-point tries, and even his defense — the most criticized area of his game — has improved.

Better yet, the Magic, winners of seven of their last eight games, sit only a half-game out of the East’s final playoff spot.

Vucevic has been the team’s most valuable player.

“I’m so happy for him,” forward Aaron Gordon says. “He’s worked so damn hard. His skill level is so high. He deserves it. I really believe that he’ll be (an All-Star Game) starter one day. I told him to try and go win the MVP.”

Vucevic has been helped, in part, by assistant coach Mike Batiste, a former center and power forward who spent the bulk of his pro career starring in Europe. Batiste played in Belgium during the 2000-01 season and played against Borislav Vucevic twice.

Batiste sees commonalities between Nikola and his father.

“They have a high basketball IQ and they have a high fundamental skill set,” Batiste says. “When you see (Nikola), he’s not the most athletic center. He doesn’t jump high out of the gym. But his fundamental skill set is so high, he’s able to survive night after night against the best players in the world. That’s why he is an All-Star right now. Playing against his dad, he (was) a good passer, a guy with a high IQ who understood the game a lot.”

Batiste, Clifford and Magic employees have reveled in Vucevic’s All-Star selection. They are happy for Vucevic because they genuinely like him, and he feels proud to represent the franchise. On Thursday night, fans attending the Magic’s win over the Hornets received a poster with Vucevic’s image and the words “CONGRATS VOOCH.”

Teammates have celebrated, too.

On Jan. 31, the night he was selected, the night the Magic defeated the Indiana Pacers, Vucevic walked into the postgame locker room and teammates cheered, clapped and dumped water on him.

Hey now…⁦@NikolaVucevic⁩ is an ⁦@NBAAllStar⁩ !!!!!

(Video courtesy of ⁦@TFlight31⁩ ) pic.twitter.com/dRpOBr0mAs

— Orlando Magic PR (@Magic_PR) February 1, 2019

“You could really tell that a lot of people around the organization were genuinely happy for me,” Vucevic says. “That means a lot. As important as what I do on the court is for me, it’s also maybe even more important that those people think highly of me as a person.

“I really couldn’t have done it without my teammates to get there, and I appreciate their support. They gave me so much support all year long and when I got selected as well. The way they were happy for me, that means so much to me.”

As Nikola and Nikoleta awaited the birth of their first child, family visited from Montenegro. Nikoleta’s mom and dad and Nikola’s mom and dad arrived in December to be in Orlando just in case Nikoleta went into labor when the Magic were playing on the road.

On Dec. 17, Nikoleta gave birth to a son, Filip, who weighed 8 pounds and 12.4 ounces and measured 22.5 inches.

Ljiljana and Borislav have remained in Florida to help, especially when Nikola is traveling for games.

“The grandchild tops it all,” Nikola says. “They’re in love with him. It’s funny for me to see them like that. Whenever they see him, they just melt down. They talk to him. They always want to hold him, play with him. He’s so little — they can’t do much. But they always want to spend time with him.”

Even though Nikola is 28 years old, with a child of his own, his parents still worry about him. His mom watches him play and, with a mother’s uncanny perception, can spot when Nikola is worried about something off the court. His dad often critiques his play, offering encouragement when he does well and pointers when he can do better.

Nikola is not complaining, but when asked what it feels like to travel so often — to leave his wife and their newborn son — he acknowledges that it is difficult to not be there for all of Filip’s first months.

“Every day he changes, he grows,” Nikola says. “Once I’m (home for) a few days, I kind of learn his habits and how he is. And then I have to go again and come back, and he’s changed again a little bit. So that’s the hardest, when I have to leave, because I want to be there with him. But that’s part of it. A lot of NBA players, a lot of athletes in the world have similar situations. It’s part of our jobs.”

Missing Filip has made Nikola understand better what it must have felt like for his parents to let him leave for California back in 2007.

And that partly explains why becoming an All-Star meant so much to him.

His family endured a lot to help it happen.

On Thursday night, his parents, Nikoleta and even Filip boarded a private jet with him to spend the weekend in North Carolina. On Saturday, his older sister, Biljana, will arrive in Charlotte. All of them, even little Filip, will be in the stands during the All-Star Game.

✈️ to Charlotte! @NBAAllStar #AllStarWeekend pic.twitter.com/cThwvadVvQ

— Nikola Vucevic (@NikolaVucevic) February 15, 2019

Once again, Vucevic probably will look for his family, just like he did the night he was selected an All-Star.

“It’ll be an amazing feeling to have the closest people that I have in my life all be there at the same time,” he says. “It’ll be a special feeling. My parents, my sister, my wife and my son now — that’s my family. Those are my people. And I’ll have a lot of friends there as well that I’m very close with and are my best friends.

“When you have all those great people around you, it means so much. But to me what will probably be the most special is that my son will be there. He won’t have any idea what’s going on. He’ll have headphones on. But just knowing that he’s there, it’ll be a very proud moment for me.”

As a child, Nikola loved to attend his father’s games and loved to hear his dad tell stories about his teammates.

Maybe one day, Filip will ask to hear stories from Nikola.

“I’ll enjoy telling him the stories,” Nikola says. “It’ll be fun to me to have the same experience that my dad did with me. So we’ll see if he starts liking the game of basketball. I think he will. When we give him a little basketball, he holds it.”

The first story Nikola can tell Filip might revolve around Feb. 17, 2019, the day Filip — held by his mom, surrounded by two adoring grandparents and a loving aunt — sat in the stands as Daddy played in his first All-Star Game.

For the Vucevic family, basketball is a family passion.

And on Sunday, the family will experience its greatest triumph.

As Nikola Vucevic will tell you, all of them played a role in making it possible.

(Top photo: Reinhold Matay / USA Today)