Arijan Komazec

Arijan Komazec

Personal information
Born	January 23, 1970 Zadar, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia
Nationality	Croatian
Listed height	6 ft 7 in (2.01 m)
Listed weight	200 lb (91 kg)
Career information
NBA draft	1992 / Undrafted
Playing career	1986–2004
Position	Shooting guard / Small forward
Career history
1986–1992	Zadar
1992–1993	Panathinaikos
1993–1995	Cagiva Varèse
1995–1997	Buckler/Kinder Bologna
1997–1998	Varèse
1998–1999	Olympiacos
1999–2000	Zadar
2001	AEK
2003–2004	Air Avellino
Career highlights and awards
Greek All Star Game MVP (1999)
Medals Men’s Basketball Representing  Yugoslavia World Championships 1990 Argentina Yugoslavia European Championships 1991 Italy Yugoslavia Representing  Croatia Olympic Games 1992 Barcelona Croatia World Championships 1994 Canada Croatia European Championships 1993 Germany Croatia 1995 Greece Croatia

Arijan Komazec (born January 23, 1970) is a retired Croatian basketball player.

Career

National team

He was a member of the Yugoslavian national team (1990–92) and then the Croatian national team. He was a part of the Croatian teams that won Silver at the 1992 Olympics, and Bronze at Eurobasket 1993 and 1995.

Club

Komazec started his professional career as a basketball player at the age of 16 in the historical club of Zadar in the 1986-87 season. At the end of the previous season Zadar had become champions of the Yugoslav League and had the right to participate in the FIBA European Champions Cup. Komazec made great performances and led his team in the fourth place of the top 6 semifinal group stage. After six years in Zadar, where he became the absolute leader and scorer of his team, he made the big step in his career for the transcription of the Greek League (which was then the best in Europe) and Panathinaikos of the coach Željko Pavličević and the Greek superstar Nikos Galis. There he found an old acquaintance from years of Zadar, Stojko Vranković who had just returned from the NBA. In a year that began with ambitions to win the championship, Panathinaikos and him also, won only the 1993 Greek Cup in a final against Sato Aris. Komazec, although he did some excellent performances, did not respond to satisfactorily both agonists and pneumatically to the high demands of Panathinaikos, who preparing to make the fling at European level and the summer was loaned to Cagiva Varese where he played the next two seasons (1993-94 in A2 & 1994-95 A1) and made impressive performances. The feeling that he did by his performannces in Varese, they did Buckler Bologna, which was the dominant team of the Italian League the last three years, to buy his contract from Panathinaikos and close deal with him for the next two years in the effort to replace deserved the large void left Saša Danilović leaving for the NBA and Miami Heat. The Croatian star didn't succeed for once more time to responde the high demands of competitive sport at top level and led Virtus in the meager wins of the Italian Supercup in 1996 and the Italian Cup in 1997. This failure brought him back again to Varese the next year (1997–98) where rediscovered his best self and with scoring resital led the Lombardy team to the playoffs semifinals in the Italian League and the course on participation in the Euroleague after 20 years. The summer of 1998 came the third and final chance for Komazec to make an important achievement in a great club of European basketball, agreeing to play for Olympiacos of Dušan Ivković. Arijan began very well the season and everything indicated that the experiment could be something achieved much good in the end of the season when the major titles both in Greece and Europe, but an injury put him off the pitch obligations for half months and substantially away form throughout the remaining year. The participation in the 1999 FIBA Euroleague Final Four in Munich is the only one who has to remember from his short and essentially failed passage to Olympiacos. The next season (1999-2000) he returned to his roots, and quite unexpectedly met in Zadar by Dino Rađa and led together the Dalmatian club in the semifinals of the FIBA Saporta Cup where they defeated by AEK. Τhe won of the Krešimir Ćosić Cup did the season sufficiently successful, the last until the end of his career..

He was briefly part of the Vancouver Grizzlies, an NBA team from the 2000-2001 season, but he has only spent one month with the team and has not played in any NBA games, and he has since kept to European teams.

Personal life

His mother hails from Kraljevo, in Serbia. His maternal uncle is Petar Popović, the Yugoslav basketball legend. Komazec himself claimed in a Radio interview in Zadar after an incident during a game between Zadar and Partizan in which Zadar fans scanted that he was Serb after he allegedly applaused Partizan, that his paternal family was originally surnamed Komazet, and is of German origin, despite the fact that the Komazec are ethnic Serbs of Dalmatia, Orthodox Christians, that settled during the Great Serb Migrations. His maternal cousin is Marko Popović.^[1]

References

1. "NISAM SRBIN, VEĆ NEMAC - Zadarski košarkaš Arijan Komazec tvrdi da je njegova porodica germanskog, a ne srpskog porekla, i da nije pravoslava" (in Serbo-Croatian). Kurir. February 3, 2008.

External links

• Arijan Komazec
• Sports Illustrated
• Eurobasket
• basketpedya.com
• Euroleague.net Profile