Duško

Dusko Vujosevic For decades, he has been applying a unique method in working with young people, athletes: he would choose and bring each of them a book that they had to read. Coach and Great Librarian - if that's not a hellish combination, I don't know what is.

Not only was he well-read, but he was one of the rare people in modern sports (and not only sports) who understood the power of books and literature. And it paid off - all the players for whom he was a significant coach in their careers are special people, they stand out from other players, not necessarily in knowledge and skill, there are too many good players today, but clearly separate attitude and personality and it is not difficult to recognize them.

Dusko Vujosevic and Bozo Koprivica They were great friends, brothers in Partizan, Montenegro, anti-fascism... and now, even though Božo was ten years older, they died within twenty days. An obituary in two acts: Bota and Duško.

"In the spring, May 11, 1994, my great friend Duško Vujošević invited me to come to his place in Brescia. He worked as a coach there. When he wasn't training, we visited music magazines, bookstores, cafes... We went on trips to Milan, to the shores of Lake Lago..."

Anyone who has read Božo's story "The Death of Captain Roma, More Cheerfully About Suicide" also remembers the deeper, tragic tone of their friendship.

Duško was one of the few public figures in the region who was suitable for popular “chaknorisms” to be woven around him. (Well, that one passed away recently too.) “The zone set up by Duško Vujošević is more beautiful than the Zamfir Zone, and more dangerous than the Twilight Zone.” Or “Duško can get a technical foul before he even enters the hall.”

Twice, in two different basketball eras, he led Partizan to the Euroleague final tournament.

He was the first coach of independent Montenegro.

And, so Montenegrin - he experienced inappropriate challenges and primitive fan-butcher performances before the match. He bore it all stoically, with a smile. I had the impression that he was left with a bitter taste from the Montenegrin episode... And who hasn't?

Of course, he couldn't fit into a system where everything was controlled by the head coach and his bench/team.

A citizen of Titograd, but always and above all, a Mediterranean, fascinated by that unique light, which is why painting was one of his passions. A collector of proven taste: his favorite authors were Vojo Stanić i Cuca Sokic(Art readers remember his article about the Herceg Novi sorcerer.)

Talking with him about literature and painting was a real pleasure. While he worked in Italy or Russia, he obsessively read their current writers, it was part of the "preparation" for a new job and a new city.

He dealt with his illness heroically, was active, despite everything, until the end. Always ready for a duel, concise, he loved precision in both words and play.

Until the end, he was one of the most enduring symbols of resistance in Serbia.

And if you allow me, on the occasion of his departure, a mini-excursion about our era: this is a time when everyone looks like each other, a time of superficiality and unification, a great age of lukewarmness... An era without a spiritual incident - as there will be in the age of political correctness and endless "editing" of culture to the measure of the ruling superficiality. (The revenge of nothingness for the dazzling peaks of high-modernist art and post-structuralist thought, if you ask me.)

Look, there is conformity everywhere, not just among coaches, there are no different writers, painters, musicians - everything is expected, desirable, skillful, but something huge is missing.

William Sarojan spoke before his death about the American literature of the time, the seventies of the last century - "It's all nice, I see many educated and skilled writers, but I don't see a single one Faulkner".

That is the essence and fundamental problem.

In Saroyan's words, Duško was the Faulkner of this game. One of the last.