Mirza Delibašić (9 January 1954 – 8 December 2001) was a Bosnian professional basketball player and coach.
Delibašić was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991. He was enshrined into the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2008, he was named one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors. He is widely considered one of the best shooters in the history of European basketball.
Early life
[edit]Delibašič was born in Tuzla, PR Bosnia and Herzegovina to Izet Delibašić, a native of Kakanj, and Zajkana (née Mehičević) from Ljubuški.[1] Young Mirza took up tennis, excelling at it. By the age of fourteen, he switched to basketball.
Club career
[edit]Mirza Delibašić, nicknamed Kinđe, led his club Bosna to the EuroLeague Championship in 1979. He played his first games aged 15 for KK Sloboda Dita, Tuzla's basketball club. Three years later, in 1971, he signed a contract with KK Bosna.
After leaving Bosna, Delibašić went to the Spanish Primera División, where he ended up being considered one of the best players ever to play for Real Madrid, along with the likes of Juan Corbalán, Wayne Brabender, Fernando Martín Espina, Fernando Romay, Dražen Petrović, and Arvydas Sabonis.
In his club career, he won numerous titles in European club competitions. In addition to having played together for their Yugoslav national team, Mirza Delibašić and Dražen Dalipagić, also played together with Real Madrid. Their performance in a 1983 European Champions Cup game versus Cibona, in Zagreb, is only one of the many highlights of their careers. In that game, Delibašić scored 26 points and Dalipagić 33. The game appropriately finished with a two-on-one fast-break, with Delibašić making a behind-the-back fake pass to Dalipagić, and passing by a defender for a two-handed dunk at the buzzer. Cibona's fans put aside their team's loss in the game, and showed their appreciation for the Bosnian stars performances, with a standing ovation at the end of the game.
Career ending
[edit]In early summer 1983, twenty-nine-year-old Delibašić left Real Madrid and signed with the Italian League club JuveCaserta coached by his former Bosna mentor Bogdan Tanjević.
In August 1983, the team went for preseason training and conditioning to the town of Bormio in the Italian Alps. Following the gruelling altitude training, after coming back south to Caserta, Delibašić suffered a near-fatal brain hemorrhage that would turn out to be career-ending. With Delibašić in critical condition, a private plane was immediately organized to airlift him to the Military Medical Academy (VMA) in Belgrade where he was hospitalized for months. He survived and recovered, but not enough to return to playing professional basketball thus being forced into retirement effective immediately at only the age of twenty nine.
National team career
[edit]En route to a place among the greatest European players, Mirza Delibašić won every major FIBA tournament with the senior Yugoslavian national basketball team, including: the Summer Olympic Games gold medal, at the 1980 Summer Olympics, EuroBasket gold two times (1975 and 1977), and the FIBA World Cup gold at the 1978 FIBA World Championship.
Awards and accomplishments
[edit]Professional career
[edit]- 2× Yugoslav League Champion: (1978, 1980)
- Yugoslav Cup Winner: (1978)
- EuroLeague Champion: (1979)
- FIBA Club World Cup Champion: (1981)
- Spanish League Champion: (1982)
- FIBA's 50 Greatest Players: (1991)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina Sportsman of the 20th century: (2000)
- FIBA Hall of Fame: (2007)
- 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors: (2008)
Coaching career
[edit]Delibašić lived in Sarajevo throughout the 1992-1996 siege of the city. Simultaneously, Delibašić coached the newly established Bosnian national basketball team at EuroBasket 1993 in Germany, where they finished in 8th place.[2]
Personal life
[edit]Marriages
[edit]In the late 1970s, Delibašić married his girlfriend Branka. The couple had a child, son Dario born in late December 1979, before divorcing shortly thereafter in 1980 upon Delibašić's move abroad to play with Real Madrid.
By 1984, KK Bosna administrator Delibašić began dating professional basketball player Slavica Šuka, playing with ŽKK Bosna.[3] In summer 1986, with Šuka six months pregnant, the couple married in a civic ceremony in Trebinje with former professional basketball player Zdravko Čečur as the groom's best man.[4] Several months later, in October, the couple had a child, son Danko.
Children
[edit]Delibašić's son with Branka, Dario Delibašić, would follow in his father's footsteps by becoming a professional basketball player, spending time with KK Crvena zvezda, KK Zadar, and KK Bosna.[5][6] In 2015, 35-year-old retired basketball player Dario Delibašić, by then residing in Sarajevo and pursuing hospitality entrepreneurship via running a restaurant in the city, was tried in absentia in Udine on a drug trafficking charge, allegedly as part of a Balkans-based organized crime group whose members were on trial simultaneously; Delibašić received a 6-year prison sentence, which he never served due to Bosnia-Herzegovina and Italy not having an extradition treaty.[7][8] In May 2019, Dario Delibašić was apprehended by the Sarajevo Canton police on suspicion of being an accomplice in the 20 April 2019 kidnapping of Tamer Kilerdži, a Sarajevo-based nargila bar owner;[9][10] Delibašić ended up spending 2 months in prison detention before being released.[11]
Death
[edit]Due to his heavy drinking and smoking, Delibašić's final years were marked by persistent health problems that led to his death in 2001 in Sarajevo, aged 47. At a funeral attended by thousands, he was interred next to his close friend—singer Davorin Popović who had died earlier that year—at Bare Cemetery's Alley of Greats. After Delibašić's death, KK Bosna renamed its arena in his honor.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Bogdan Tanjević: Kako je Mirza postao Sarajlija". Ljubusaci.com. 8 December 2018. Retrieved 31 December 2019.
- ^ "Košarkaška reprezentacija BiH je 1993. Ostvarila najveći uspjeh – osmo mjesto".
- ^ Glušac, Borislav (1987). "Ljubav između koševa". Ven. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
- ^ Zećo, Elma (22 April 2005). "Slavica Delibašić: Moj život bez Mirze". Gracija.info (in Serbian). Retrieved 5 August 2025.
- ^ Dario Delibasic FIBA profile
- ^ Dario Delibasic ABA League profile
- ^ Antonutti, Cristina (10 February 2015). "Tradito dallo shopping, arrestato il narcotrafficante dei Balcani". Il Gazzettino.it (in Italian). Retrieved 5 August 2025.
- ^ "Dario Delibašić u Italiji osuđen na šest godina zbog trgovine drogom". Klix.ba (in Serbian). 18 May 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2025.
- ^ "U Sarajevu uhapšen Dario Delibašić zbog otmice državljanina Turske". Klix.ba (in Serbian). 17 May 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2025.
- ^ "Sin legendarnog Kinđeta lišen slobode!". Crna-hronika.info (in Serbian). Oslobodjenje. 17 May 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2025.
- ^ "Dario Delibašić pušten iz pritvora uz određene mjere zabrane". Klix.ba (in Serbian). 11 July 2019. Retrieved 5 August 2025.
External links
[edit]- Mirza Delibašić at the FIBA Hall of Fame (archive)
- Mirza Delibašić at FIBA (archive)
- Euroleague.net 50 Greatest Contributors
- Mirza Delibašić at Olympedia
- Mirza Delibašić at Olympics.com
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