The professor of basketball

"Everybody knows what is good basketball, but he is one of the few who know how it is being made", said one of the most successful coaches Bozidar Maljkovic about his teacher, professor Aleksandar Nikolic.

Numerous successes of the Yugoslav basketball are connected to Nikolic. With him as a coach, the Yugoslav national team won its first medal on European championships - the silver medal in Belgrade in 1961, as well as its first medal on world championships - also the silver one in Rio de Janeiro in 1963. After the practice in Italy, Nikolic returned at the helm of the national team, winning two gold medals - on the 1977 European championship in Liege and 1978 World championship in Manila.

File photo of Nikolic (left) and Zoran Slavnic, guard of the Yugoslav national team, the European Championships, Liege, 1977

Nikolic was successful wherever he used to go. At the beginning of the '90s, he was the expert adviser of the Belgrade Partizan coach Zeljko Obradovic, greatly contributing with his knowledge to the most successful season in the history of this club. In this season Partizan won the Championship, the Cup and the European Champions' Cup.

Numerous generations not only of talented Yugoslav players but coaches matured under Nikolic's watchful eye. Bozidar Maljkovic is the first coach who won the European Champions' Cup (now Euroleague) with three different teams, while Zeljko Obradovic is doubtlessly the most successful European coach of today, since he won numerous medals and trophies with the Yugoslav clubs and national team in the past decade.

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