| NBA Draft 2003: It's a whole new world for Jazz first-round pick |
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By Tim Buckley
Aleksandar "Sasha" Pavlovic has no doubt he is prepared to play in the NBA. He has no qualms about moving to Utah. He wants nothing more than to go to work, right away.
"I think I'm ready for it," said Pavlovic, his English cautionary, but really quite impressive considering he started learning the language just three months ago.
It is little wonder Sasha seems so anxious. The Jazz's first-round selection in Thursday night's NBA Draft comes from a place where paychecks routinely fail to arrive, a place wacky things happen for unexplained reasons, a war-torn place truly a world away.
He comes from a place he must now leave behind, a place where times are tough but people from there seem even tougher. "I always believed in myself," Pavlovic said during a Friday news conference at the Delta Center, just hours after the Jazz picked him No. 19 overall and an early departing plane from New York delivered him, his agent, his father and an uncle to Salt Lake. "But the last year," Pavlovic added, "I realized I can play in the NBA."
Now 19 years old, it was not long ago that Pavlovic was just another teen harboring hopes ? hopes of making it out, hopes of playing in basketball's best professional league. There are some business issues to resolve first, but, soon, hope will become reality. Understanding that reality's significance, however, requires rewinding the calendar.
It is last winter, and NBA scouts are in the former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro to watch a team called Buducnost and a player named Zarko Cabarkapa.
The 6-foot-11 Cabarkapa seems to be the real deal, and will wind up getting drafted No. 17 overall on Thursday by the Phoenix Suns Cabarkapa, however, is not the only player who catches the eyes of those travel-to-all-ends-of-the-world scouts.
At 7-4 and 250 pounds, Slavko Vranes certainly stands out. He will end up going No. 39 overall in the draft's second round, to the New York Knicks.
Then there is the 6-7 Pavlovic, a streaky sort who scores in bunches and is said to shoot lights-out when he does. "Sasha," Jazz owner Larry H. Miller would say Friday, "was the guy we had our eye on."
If only the fine folks with Buducnost gushed with such glee, Pavlovic's road to Utah would be less lumpy than it seems to have been. Early on this past season during play in the YUBA League ? the Yugoslavian Basketball Association ? Pavlovic played a lot. The scouts noticed him right away, and loved what they saw. Utah envisioned its next shooting guard. At times, the kid even stole attention away from the much better-known Cabarkapa, a power forward. Then, things changed.
"New coach came," said Spomenko Pajovic, Pavlovic's European agent. "Nobody knows why," Pavlovic said. As a result, younger but better players, players oozing potential, would sit for long stretches. Older, established veterans with no NBA future would toil long minutes, a caste system of sorts controlling who played and who did not. Pavlovic no longer started. And Buducnost, despite having three 2003 NBA draft picks, struggled, winning only a couple of its dozen-plus Euroleague games.
Pavlovic worried about what all that would do to his NBA future. "New coach," he said, "was like, 'I don't young players.' " All the time, Pajovic maintains, Buducnost's business dealings with its players were in disarray. Pavlovic supposedly went months in a row ? Pajovic says five ? without being paid.
According to a recent copyright story in the Boston Globe, Boston Celtics general manager Chris Wallace called the situation with Buducnost "chaotic for the whole team." "It was bad. Real bad. It's a tough situation, a tough team,"
American agent Marc Cornstein, who also represents Pavlovic, told the Globe. "They had a crazy coach. They didn't get paid. . . . And they didn't do well at all. That should tell you something." As a result of the pay problem, Pavlovic had planned to go to arbitration next week with Buducnost officials. Now, though, it seems matters will be resolved even before an independent arbitrator has to hear the case.
"(Pavlovic's) father is very friendly with the people he knows over there," Pajovic said of Dusan Pavlovic, who played pro basketball in Europe. "So, they (Buducnost officials) spoke with us two days before draft and said . . . 'We're going to find solution.' They're going to be reasonable."
The Jazz may have to contribute up to $350,000 (the most allowed by NBA rules) to help facilitate a buyout, but Buducnost will have its coffers lined, bankruptcy should no longer be a concern for the club, and Pavlovic will be free to sign with Utah a three-year rookie deal worth about $3.5 million. "We don't expect any problems with the buyout," said Kevin O'Connor, the Jazz's vice president of basketball operations.
Asked about the pay problems, Pavlovic shrugs. Money, he said, is "the biggest problem, in all Europe, all Yugoslavia." No check? Oh, well. Nothing you really can do about it. Not for now. Playing time, however, is another matter altogether.
"Toughest was sitting on the bench, knowing that he's (one of the) top two players on the team. Not money," said Pajovic, the agent. "Those kids, they don't think about money. Just about being on the court, sitting on the bench without fair reason why."
In Utah, for years to come, cash flow should be the least of Pavlovic's problems. Once he signs with the Jazz, handsome paychecks will arrive regularly. But playing time? That Pavlovic will have to earn, on his own. Yet he welcomes the challenge, and wants nothing more. "Yes, I was worried," Pavlovic said of when times were toughest. "But when I was coming here, I know that I can play," he added. "I believe in myself, and I do my job very hard."
Used courtesy of: Deseret Morning News |
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