Predrag "Saša" Danilović (, ; born February 26, 1970), usually referred to in English as Sasha Danilović, is a Serbian professional basketball executive who served as the president of KK Partizan and Basketball Federation of Serbia and former player, considered one of the best European shooting guards of the 1990s. Danilović was the EuroLeague Final Four MVP in 1992, was voted Mister Europa Player of the Year in 1998, and was Italian League MVP the same year.
Beginning in 2007, Danilović served as the president of Partizan, the club with which he spent six years as a player during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 2015, he resigned from the position. On December 15, 2016, Danilović became the president of the Basketball Federation of Serbia (KSS). He resigned from the position in late 2024.
Early life and career Born in Sarajevo to a family of Herzegovinian Serbs (father Milan from the Orašje Zubci village near Trebinje and mother Vuka from the Kukričje village near Bileća), Danilović grew up in the Alipašino polje neighbourhood near the RTV Sarajevo main building. Many of his childhood summers and winters were spent in his father's and mother's respective villages, as well as in the town of Trebinje where he had aunts and uncles.
A tall and lanky kid, Danilović excelled at a variety of sports, including football, speed skating, and street basketball. Already showing promise at streetball, in 1984, the fourteen-year-old began playing organized basketball in KK Bosna's youth setup under youth coach Mladen "Makso" Ostojić. The player's talent was immediately evident and it didn't take long before he started receiving attention from bigger Yugoslav clubs such as KK Partizan whose assistant coach Duško Vujošević was alerted to the youngster's talents by the team's point guard Željko Obradović who had spotted Danilović during summer 1985 at a Yugoslav intra-republic youth basketball tournament on Mount Zlatibor. Young Danilović played for a select team of players representing SR Bosnia-Herzegovina at the tournament.
By late 1985, Vujošević started courting the fifteen-year-old. Getting Danilović and his parents to agree to a move to Belgrade proved to be the easy part; the real challenge was getting his club KK Bosna to sign off on the transfer. Danilović wasn't under a professional contract with the Sarajevo club, however, according to Yugoslav Basketball Federation (KSJ) rules, being a youth system prospect, he needed his club's permission to complete the move. In Danilović's own words: "Bosna club management weren't too keen on me at all while I was there; they had even been planning to loan me out to other Sarajevo-area clubs, which I didn't want at all. But then Vujošević started sniffing around, and they suddenly wanted to keep me. Also, Bosna club president Mirza Delibašić and Partizan vice-president Dragan Kićanović were close friends going back to their playing days, so that created additional awkwardness and the whole thing dragged out for a while".
Since Bosna didn't want to let him go, by the summer of '86 Danilović and Partizan decided to act unilaterally to move the player to Belgrade, knowing full well he'd have to sit out a year before taking part in official competitions. The move marked the beginning of a long friendship and professional association between Danilović and Vujošević, with the twenty-eight-year-old coach initially acting as a mentor to the sixteen-year-old player. By December 1986 Vujošević had moved up in the Partizan club hierarchy, becoming head coach in place of the fired Vladislav Lučić while young Danilović trained by himself and with the first team. Due to the unfortunate administrative situation, Danilović could only practice with Partizan players, which he did vigorously and assiduously, up to 7 or 8 hours per day. He stated in later interviews that it wasn't until his arrival at Partizan that he started training seriously. His living arrangements were provided for by the club; they put him up in a room at the JNA Stadium that he shared with youngster teammates Oliver Popović and Popović's brother. Furthermore, in accordance with his parents' wishes, the club ensured he also pursued his full-time secondary education by getting enrolled in the streamlined Petar Drapšin Technical High School. However, unable to make the classes due to frequent, lengthy practices, he soon switched to part-time education at the streamlined touristic high school. Discussing his first days in Belgrade and arrival at a new club, Danilović later said:
Simultaneously KK Partizan tried to obtain permission to officially register their new player while Bosna for their part launched a claim against the player with KSJ, which ruled in their favour, and young Danilović had another year added to his prohibition on playing for any age bracket within Partizan's system.
Faced with new developments over the length of his ban, in the summer of 1987, seventeen-year-old Danilović moved to Cookeville, Tennessee, enrolling at Cookeville High School where he was a basketball, track, and water polo star coming in second place to Daren Matthews at the school meet. However, only seven months later, in February 1988, he went back to Belgrade. Coming back to SFR Yugoslavia from the United States, Danilović resumed practicing with Partizan, though still unable to play in official games with them. His living arrangements also changed; the club moved him to Hotel Putnik in New Belgrade for a short time before eventually putting him up in an apartment in Blok 45 that he shared with Popović. In summer 1988, Danilović was included in the Yugoslavia under-18 national team that competed at the European Championship for Juniors on home soil in Titov Vrbas and Srbobran. Coached by his mentor Vujošević and playing alongside promising Yugoslav juniors Arijan Komazec, Žan Tabak, Rastko Cvetković, etc., Danilović led the team to the gold medal.
Club career KK Partizan 1988–89 season: Korać Cup & Yugoslav Cup winners, losing the Yugoslav league finals In the summer of 1988, Danilović's two-year ban finally expired and the player was free to suit up for Partizan. Already familiar with the players he had been practicing with for more than a year, the 18-year-old joined a roster laden with talent at all positions – 21-year-old point guard Saša Đorđević, 22-year-old forward Žarko Paspalj who could play both the three and four positions, 22-year-old small forward Ivo Nakić, versatile 20-year-old center Vlade Divac, and his 21-year-old backup Miroslav Pecarski as well as a pair of experienced 28-year-olds: backup point guard Željko Obradović and backup center Milenko Savović. Starting small forward Goran Grbović (who often also played the shooting guard position) left the club for Oximesa that summer, opening up space for the incoming Danilović. Coming off a season in which they made the EuroLeague Final Four (eliminated by Maccabi in the semi-final) and lost to emerging Jugoplastika in the Yugoslav League playoff final series, the young Partizan team was looking to reclaim the domestic league title.
Young Danilović immediately got big minutes at shooting guard, registering a promising debut campaign, especially excelling at defense while contributing a modest 5.6 points per game on offense (123 points over 21 league appearances). Partizan finished the regular season in first place with a 16–6 record, the same as Jugoplastika, but with a better point differential, meaning the Belgrade club would have home-court advantage in the playoffs.
Winning both cup competitions that season – the FIBA Korać Cup and the Yugoslav Cup — came as a great confidence boost for the young squad. The two trophies came in quick succession during mid-March 1989 – on Thursday, March 16, Partizan went to Cantù for the first leg of the Korać Cup final away versus Wiwa Vismara, losing by 13 points with Danilović getting the starting assignment and registering 10 points, followed up immediately by a trip to Maribor to play Jugoplastika in the Yugoslav Cup final on Sunday, March 19, winning 87–74, before returning home for the return leg of the Korać Cup final at home in Hala sportova on Wednesday, March 22, and winning by 19 to undo their first-leg deficit and take the trophy. Danilović, this time coming off the bench, again contributed with 10 key points in the return leg, getting his name on his second major trophy within three days.
Back on the domestic league front, in the playoff semi-final, Partizan easily eliminated crosstown rivals Crvena Zvezda, setting up the finals rematch with Jugoplastika of the EuroLeague in which they had just triumphed. The best-of-three final series started in Belgrade, but right away Partizan lost the home-court advantage by dropping the opening game 73–74. The series shifted to Split where Jugoplastika won 75–70, beating Partizan to the league championship for the second straight season.
1989–90 season: broken leg A testament to his brilliant debut season, in the summer of 1989 Danilović got called up for the Yugoslav national team training camp by head coach Dušan Ivković ahead of EuroBasket 1989, eventually making the final 12-man squad where he played alongside club teammates Divac and Paspalj. Coming back to Partizan later that summer, the roster went through major changes as both Divac and Paspalj left after signing NBA contracts, with the Lakers and Spurs, respectively, point guard Đorđević served out his mandatory Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) stint thus missing most of the season, and head coach Vujošević left for Spanish club Oximesa from Granada, taking veteran center Savović with him. Reba Ćorković, who had previously coached the club for two stint - during the mid-1970s and then in the early 1980s —winning two domestic league titles, in 1975–76 and 1980–81 seasons - returned as head coach.
Playing with a depleted roster, the season turned out to be a write-off as it quickly became clear this Partizan squad was no match for tougher Yugoslav clubs. Their deficiencies were especially evident at center as Pecarski, who in the absence of Divac was forced into playing big minutes, was often outplayed by the opposition's big man. Partizan finished the season in 8th place with a 9–13 record, missing the playoffs – the club's worst league finish in nineteen years. They didn't fare much better in the Yugoslav Cup or FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup, finishing both competitions at the quarterfinal stage. It wasn't much better for Danilović individually, either: after steadily improving performances started the season off strongly, he suffered a season-ending broken leg after only 11 games, posting 14.3ppg. The injury also kept him out of contention for inclusion in the Yugoslavia national team roster at the 1990 World Championship.
1990–91 season: return from injury, another Yugoslav league finals loss Using his by-now-famous work ethic, twenty-year-old Danilović focused on rehabilitating his broken leg to regain game fitness for the start of the 1990–91 season. Meanwhile, the team went through significant changes with head coach Ćorković let go and eventually replaced by Danilović's mentor Vujošević who thus returned to the club after a largely unsuccessful episode in Spain. Another returnee with a sub-par season behind him was old favourite Paspalj, back after only a season with the Spurs. With Partizan's main title contender, reigning European and Yugoslav champions KK Split going through a coaching change with their head coach Boža Maljković accepting Barça's lucrative offer, in addition to center Dino Rađa's lucrative move to Italy, the reinforced Partizan roster seemed poised to finally overtake its biggest rival of the last few years.