Subotic eying Kukoc for Olympiakos
Spurred by his team’s Greek Cup triumph over Panathinaikos last week, Olympiakos’s recently appointed basketball coach Slobodan Subotic seems to be focusing on his team’s make-up for the upcoming season – with ambitious plans in mind. The Slovenian coach, who first moved to Greece in the mid-1980s to play with the Aris club before going on to coach several teams here, has expressed an interest in signing the Croat NBA player Toni Kukoc. Now 33 years old and playing with one of the NBA’s more mediocre teams, the Atlanta Hawks, Kukoc has announced that he intends to return to Europe. According to reports, Olympiakos’s President Socrates Kokkalis has given Slobodan Subotic the green light to lure Kukoc to the Piraeus club in what is likely to develop into a heated bidding war for the Croat star. Kukoc, who won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls thanks to the presence of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen (1996-98) before moving to the Philadelphia ’76ers and winding up at his current club, crossed the Atlantic in 1993 as a hot prospect backed by three successive European titles with the Yugoplastica club – of the former Yugoslavia – in 1989, 1990 and 1991. Subotic may well have good reason to feel confident about having an edge over other European bidders. Croat player Dino Radja, who has also played in the NBA with the Boston Celtics, before switching to Panathinaikos with Subotic as his coach, has retained close ties to Subotic. He is also close to Kukoc from their time together with the Croatian national team. Apparently, Radja who keeps in regular touch with Kukoc, has put in a good word for Subotic, which could make the difference.
