Happy Birthday Drazen Petrovic

Today it is the birthday of Drazen Petrovic, one of the best European basketball players of all times.

Drazen Petrovic was born on October 22, 1964 in Sibenik.

In the summer of 1993, after his best NBA season and the Nets' first-round elimination by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Petrović traveled to Poland, where the Croatian national team was playing a qualification tournament for the 1993 Eurobasket.

Petrović died in a traffic accident at approximately 17:20 on June 7, 1993, four and a half months before his 29th birthday. 

Petrović is considered the crucial part of the vanguard to the present-day mass influx of European players into the NBA  Petrović's #3 was retired by the Nets in 1993, and in 2002 he was posthumously enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2013, he was voted the Best European Basketballer in History by players at the European Basketball Championship.

This is what Michael Jordan said about Drazen Petrovic: "It was a thrill to play against Drazen. Every time we competed, he competed with an aggressive attitude. He wasn't nervous. He came at me as hard as I came at him. So, we've had some great battles in the past and unfortunately, they were short battles.