The famous Montenegrin basketball coach, Petar Blažević, passed away on Wednesday, June 11, 06, and forever went down in history as a legend of Montenegrin and Yugoslav basketball. The funeral took place on June 2025, 12, surrounded by his family.
Although he was both a player and a long-time coach of the most trophy-winning Montenegrin basketball club, KK Budućnost from the then Titograd, P. Blažević achieved his most significant sporting successes with KK Mornar from Bar. The signatory of these lines had the privilege of being one of the players in coach Blažević's teams (5 seasons) and witnessing the time of the greatest success of the club and Bar's sports up to that era.
With the arrival of coach Blažević to KK Mornar, at the very end of the 1982s, a period of renaissance of Bar basketball and sports in Bar began. In the first year, coach Blažević won the Montenegrin First League with his young team and led it to a higher rank, the Yugoslav Second League, and shortly afterwards managed to reach the prestigious IB Federal League (83/26). This was "the greatest club success of Bar sports which, in more than six decades of history, has produced several individual champions and national team members in various sports" (Pobjeda, 05. 1983. 21). The team was made up of beardless young men, almost all adults in Bar, with an average age of XNUMX.
The key figure of that era was the pedagogue and strategist P. Blažević. Charmingly groomed with lush gray hair, witty and dignified, serious and unobtrusive, he led the team in competitions throughout Yugoslavia, that then noble utopia of the South Slavic peoples. It was a time when it was a great honor and privilege to call oneself a Montenegrin in Yugoslavia and a Yugoslav in Europe (Eastern and Western). It was a pre-nationalist time when people did not identify themselves ethnically but nationally. It was our EC before the EC, a state in which the aspirations of individual peoples to "all live in one state" were fulfilled. Or, as Lordan Zafranović noted: "the pinnacle of the civilization of the South Slavic peoples".
Just like us, his players, basketball was the most important thing in the world for P. Blažević: the greatest love and passion that grew into an obsession, but which required hard work. He applied the so-called "old Yugoslav school of basketball" i.e. Spartan training in Spartan conditions with rare praise. Preparations for the competitive season began with the so-called "altitude preparation": 10 days of exhausting Spartan training three times a day, without a ball, on some remote mountain in Yugoslavia. At that time, the players were so physically fit that the leaders of the game would perceive a substitution as an insult.
The popularity of basketball in Bar, and throughout the country, was on the rise as the Yugoslav national basketball team became world champion for the second time (1978) and was the current Olympic champion (1980), and KK Bosna, with former KK Mornar player B. Vučević, was the European club champion in basketball (1979).
The small town (urban settlements 9.432 inhabitants, and the city itself 6.742 inhabitants) had come to terms with its basketball club and the labor organizations were happy to "self-administer" help the club, because the players were their sons, brothers, friends or neighbors. P. Blažević was not the only galvanizer of the synergy between the club and the city at that time, but he was the centerpiece of the club that was synonymous with the idea of joint effort, enthusiasm and pride.
On one occasion, after the hall in Bar was closed, KK Mornar played an important match at SC Morača in Podgorica. The fans, led by fan legend Śara Marković, with the help of the then Željeznica, organized fan trains. Thousands of fans found a way to come to the match and fill SC Morača to the brim (the capacity at the time was 4.300 spectators). The atmosphere in both Bar and Podgorica was frenetic; referee whistles were often not heard and only by the referees' gestures could it be judged that they were playing something. KK Mornar fans were among the most ardent fans, and Bar became a symbol of the hottest stadium in Yugoslavia. The magnificent atmosphere at KK Mornar matches in Bar in the 80s is a precursor to the spectacular atmospheres at matches of the most popular European clubs today.
The master of the situation in the frenetic atmosphere was coach Blažević. He had a subtle sense of Podgorica humor, imbued with a dose of cynicism, and almost never showed emotions. In the match, in the then Titov Užice against KK Prvi Partizan, although KK Mornar dominated throughout the game, the referees did not allow Mornar to win. While we players were in shock and disbelief, a journalist asked coach Blažević for a comment on the refereeing. He calmly replied: "The refereeing was excellent. We would like this pair of referees to come and referee us in Bar".
Although the famous coaching names of Yugoslav basketball (B. Đorđević, B. Maljković, L. Stančić, B. Cenić, D. Prodanović) contributed to the development of the club, P. Blažević is the coach who left the deepest mark on the club in the last century. From his ranks, directly or indirectly, grew a significant number of coaches of enviable international reputation (S. Vučević, M. and Đ. Pavićević, P. Milović, P. Mijović) as well as academy coaches (M. Rondović, R. Čarapić, R. Pešić).
Although he was focused on results rather than working with younger categories, P. Blažević strengthened the foundations on which a significant number of basketball families and elite basketball players grew up. Three of them (A. Pavlović, M. Šekularac, N. Vučević) were drafted into the NBA league. Is that not enough for any country, let alone a coastal town? In addition to the NBA league, a large number of basketball players from Bar played a significant role in the best leagues in the country and abroad.
The era of symbiosis between the club and the city, the first half of the 80s of the last century, under the patronage of P. Blažević, left an indelible mark on Montenegrin and Bar basketball. Nothing works as well as success, it may sound like a cliché, but in that era success was born from the love of sport and left a deep mark on most of the actors of that time. Without that era and so much emotion, it would be difficult to explain the continuous decade-long, selfless investment of Đ. Pavićević, a player in whom coach Blažević showed great confidence early on, in keeping the flame burning, that is, maintaining KK Mornar as one of the two most important and successful clubs in Montenegro and one of the most important in the region.
If Yugoslavia was the "peak of civilization of the South Slavic peoples", then the era of Bar basketball, under the patronage of P. Blažević, was the "Pericles Age" of Bar sports in Yugoslavia. It is difficult to imagine that the club would still be such a pride of Bar today if it were not for the era of P. Blažević. May he be eternally glorified and praised.
Milan NIKOLIC, London
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