Sacramento, USA, March 26 (AP) - Vlade Divac and Predrag Stojakovic of the Sacramento Kings lead a group of NBA players who will hold a basketball camp this summer for children from the former Yugoslavia.
Divac and Stojakovic will be in Treviso, Italy, from June 29-July 2 to instruct players from 12-14 years of age. They will be joined by Atlanta's Toni Kukoc and six other NBA players from the former Yugoslav republics in "Basketball Without Borders," which also will include seminars on education and drug abuse.
"It's going to be a nice thing for kids who sometimes don't get a chance to enjoy basketball the same way kids in America do," Divac said.
The event is co-sponsored by the NBA, the United Nations Drug Control Program, Benetton Treviso and FIBA, the governing body of international basketball.
Toni Kukoc
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Kukoc, who played for Benetton Treviso before joining the NBA, Divac and Stojakovic will be joined by Bruno Sundov and Zan Tabak of the Indiana Pacers, Aleksandar Radojevic of the Denver Nuggets, Radislav Nesterovic of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Dalibor Bagaric and Dragan Tarlac of the Chicago Bulls.
The event will reunite children from Yugoslavia's former republics, which gained independence over the past decade after ethnic wars. Fifty children will be the guests of Benetton Treviso at the Italian League team's facilities north of Venice. Ten children will be chosen by each of the national basketball federations of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and Montenegro.
Predrag Stojakovic
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"Some of these kids haven't been together since Yugoslavia split up," Stojakovic said. "Some of them were refugees, so it's great that we can get together and talk about basketball and hopefully have a good time."
Divac, a native of Serbia, is a tireless fund-raiser and humanitarian worker for his native country.
Among other honors, he has been named a UNDCP Goodwill Ambassador for Sports Against Drugs.
