Today marks the twenty first anniversary since the death of BH basketball giant Mirza Delibasic .
Family members and friends will lay flowers on his grave in the Alley of the Greats at the Sarajevo cemetery Bare and commemorate the legendary basketball player of Bosna and Real Madrid, the last basketball romantic who was admired by basketball Europe and the whole world.
Mirza Delibasic was born on the 9th of January 1954 in Tuzla. He started his brilliant athletic career back in 1968, when he became a pioneering champion of BiH in tennis. He replaced tennis by basketball in Sloboda from Tuzla and moved to “Bosna” in 1972. He played almost 700 matches and scored 14,000 points for “Students”.
He was a Champion of Yugoslavia (1978 and 1980), the Club Champion of Europe in 1979, and won all possible trophies with the national team of the former state. He was twice Champion of the Old Continent (1977 and 1979), the World Champion in 1978 and Olympic Champion in 1980. He was proclaimed for the best basketball player of Yugoslavia in 1980. He wore the jersey of “Yugoslavia” 176 times and scored 1759 points. He was elected for the best athlete of BiH four times, and was declared for the athlete of all times in our country in 2000.
In just two years at Real Madrid, Mirza Delibasic won so many friends with his gaming and human qualities that he will never be forgotten, and his former teammate Juan Antonio Korbalan wrote the book “Conversations with Mirza”.
He remained loyal to Sarajevo during the siege as well, when he thanked on the invitation of the leadership of “Real” to replace besieged BH capital with Madrid “paradise”. He was a basketball team coach of BiH that won the eighth place on the European Championship in 1993. This is still the best performance of our national team at the European championships.
Mirza Delibasic Kindje died on the 8th of December 2001 in Sarajevo.
