Four years after he last appeared for Montenegro, Nikola Vucevic will put on the red jersey with number 4 again.
And again in the Far East - the only center who started all 82 games in the regular course of the 2022/2023 NBA season. will play at the Mundobasket in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.
The two-time participant of the All-Star Weekend played his last match for the "Reds" on September 9, 2019, in the victory over Japan (80:65) in Donguan, China, and the coach Boško Radović has confirmed that he wants to return.
"I had a conversation with Vučka 10-15 days ago, we had a great exchange. He has the desire to help the national team in the right way. He was gone for a long time, he wants to come back and Bojan Dubljević, Kendrick Perry i Nikola Ivanovic leads the national team. He is waiting for his wife to give birth, and after that we will see when she can come. He told me that he will join as soon as he can," Radović told "Vijesti".
Dubljević, the second member of the tandem dubbed the Tower Twins by the world media, ended the season with Valencia by losing to Barcelona in the quarterfinals of the ACB League and will soon be in his hometown.
"Bojan is coming to Nikšić in two or three days, we will meet and talk about everything, like with any captain. I am in contact with him and the other players non-stop, we are just waiting for Ivanovic to finish the season and be healthy".
Currently the only problem with Vladimir Mihailović, who played his last match for Mornar on January 3. Before that, he was out for more than a month due to a hand injury, returned in that match with FMP and renewed the problem. Unfortunately, that was not the end of the ordeal, as he underwent two surgeries on the abdominal wall.
"We have a problem with Vlad, who is a very important player for us. He operated on the abdominal wall once, but it was not very good, so he had to do it a second time. He started training a little, it would be good to "catch" a month of work before the preparations Everyone else is healthy, I hope it stays that way."
Ivanovic and did not go to last year's European Championship due to injuries Fedor Zugic, and there was no Vucevic either. Now all three will be in competition, and compared to the performances in Tbilisi and Berlin, Radović has a wider choice, because they imposed themselves Andrija Slavkovic i Emir Hadžibegović.
"Slavković and Hadžibegović played very well in the last FIBA "window", and in SC Derby they kept good form throughout the season. This especially applies to Slavković, who showed that he has matured and can play at the highest European level. Of course, he is counting on him most seriously. At the beginning of the preparations, the younger ones will be there as well Grbovic, A rich man, not to list further, and I no longer count Žugić among the younger ones. He has been with the senior national team for years, and after all the injuries that befell him, he has a good end to the season."
Vucevic, Dubljević, Peri and Nemanja Radović have stepped into the fourth decade, Ivanovic is on its threshold, and all the other national team members, except for the 26-year-old Petar Popović, they are quite far from the zenith of their careers. The World Championship will be a real chance for them to gain experience on the biggest stage.
"We have a team that is a mix of younger and a lot of experienced players. The role of the older ones, such as Radović, Vučević, Dubljević, Ivanovic and Peri, is to help produce players for the future. We will need all these younger guys for the years to come." emphasized the selector.
There are a lot of experienced players under the basket, but the present and the greatest future of the national team in central positions is a 23-year-old Marko Simonovic. Kolašinac played seven games for Chicago this season, and averaged 15,9 points (39% three-point shooting) and 9,9 rebounds with the Windy City Bulls in the NBA G League.
"Marko played well in the G League, he is the most seriously counted on. We will announce the list in the next few days. It is important that everyone comes healthy, and we will make sure during the preparations that we are in the best competitive shape until August 25, when the World Cup starts championship".
In the finals of the qualification for the second tied world championship in the Far East, there were no members of Montenegro Dino Radončić. The wing basketball player from Zaragoza took a break for four months, returned in mid-April, played four matches, but with significantly less minutes than before.
"Dino is out of injury, he has been training for the last two months, but he has played less than before the injury. He is healthy, we are in contact, he told me that he is preparing for the summer and next season. The question for him is whether he will stay in Zaragoza, it is important that he is active even during rest," the coach emphasized.
It was not only Radončić who had a different role than last season, because he Igor Drobnjak after the great Eurobasket, he was out of rhythm in Budućnost, and even Ivanovic did not play well in the hellish competition of the Zvezda defenders.
Others, on the other hand, fought for a significantly higher level of trust from the coaches in the clubs.
"We had a lot of players with important roles, but also some with less minutes. Slavković and Hadžibegović consistently played well and were important in the rotation of SC Derby, and members of the young bronze national team Grbović, Žugić and Bogavac had good minutes in serious clubs." added Radovic.
Preparations begin on July 21, with Serbia on August 5 in Podgorica
At Mundobasket, Montenegro will play in Group D in Pasay, a city that is part of Metropolitan Manila, against Lithuania, Mexico and Egypt.
The matches will be played from August 25 to 29, and the two best selections will most likely play against the United States of America and Greece in the main stage.
"Preparations start on July 21 and we will be in Bar the whole time. We will play the first preparatory match on August 2 against France in Montpellier, and three days later against Serbia in Podgorica. Then we will go to Tbilisi, where we will play against Georgia on August 12, and on the 13th with Iran. After that we return to Podgorica for the players to freshen up and say goodbye to their families, and on the evening of the 16th we start our journey via Istanbul. That's the only day we could find tickets to fly to the Philippines together, because we, like most national teams, we only found out where we were going at the end of April," Radović points out.
The "Reds" will arrive at the scene of the preliminary phase eight days before the first game and we will have more than enough time for acclimatization.
"We made great efforts to get the team on the same flight to Manila. Maybe it would have been better if we had gone a day or two later, but it was not possible to meet. We are planning to do another warm-up game in Manila on the 20th or 21st, but that it has not been clarified yet," said the selector.
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