Who is a Serb who broke the NBA tradition? The youngest coach on the senior bench, he demolished Kosovo for Serbia! (VIDEO) (PHOTO)

He was a promising player, he came to Red Star when he was 15 years old and he wanted to be a part of the champions generation, but he had a serious traffic accident which put an end to his career

Igor Kokoskov did something that was considered impossible for a long time. He became the first European coach who sat down on the bench of NBA team as a head strategist. No one could get that place with a large number of American and Canadian coaches. It would be the same if Serbian football team won the Champions League, and a bit harder than that.

Historical signature of Kokoskov! A Serb became the first man from Europe who took over the NBA team!

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Simply put, the NBA league is closed for foreign coaches who can be assistants, unless they have American origin, like David Blatt and Mike D'Antoni (both of them were born and grew in the USA), but the success of Kokoskov is even greater.

To recall, Dusan Ivkovic and even Zeljko Obradovic didn't dare to go to the USA because they didn't want to be assistants to some American colleague who knows less than them. Also, the legendary Italian coach Ettore Messina (the two times champion of Europe with Kinder, won a medal with Italy on Eurobasket) and he was an assistant in Cleveland. 

And he was a talented player when he got an invitation at the age of 15 to come to the basketball aliens of the former Red Star, who were all three years older than him, like Nebojsa Ilic, Sasa Obradovic, Aleksandar Grilic, Rastko Cvetkovic.

He played with them and he advanced, but when he was 19 he went to the military service. He had a traffic accident there where he injured his foot and his ankle joint. He spent 11 months in hospitals and there was no more return to basketball.

- My recommendation and the uniqueness I have in NBA is that I come from and I proudly represent Yugoslav, that is, Serbian basketball school. I never ran away from that, in the matter of fact, I was proud. That is that line of "non-American" basketball identity that I possessed in the NBA and which was especially interesting to everybody, and it gave me the room to work with the most talented players on the planet.

- A competition for going to America was announced by the Association of Trainers of Serbia. I got in contact with the people from the USA through my student team from Connecticut, through legendary coach Jim Calhoun. Since 2001, I've been constantly in the NBA league - Kokoskov recently said.

He started being a trainer with the age of 21, and he was a coach of Juniors of OKK Belgrade. He takes the first team when he was 24 and he becomes the youngest trainer in the history of Yugoslav basketball who led the Senior first league team. Only Dusko Vujosevic managed to do that with the age of 27.

After OKK Belgrade, he was leading Junior team of Partizan when the invitation came to the University of Missouri, which he accepted. He was an assistant coach for a year there and then he went to LA Clippers as an assistant in 2000 and that was his first NBA engagement. 

Although many of his Serbian colleagues laughed at him for being the fifth assistant in the NBA, and not a serious coach, Kokoskov continued to build his way in the NBA with Detroit Pistons (NBA title won), and then in Phoenix Suns. Cleveland, Orlando and Utah Jazz where he was the first assistant to the head coach. 

In the meantime, he was an assistant to Zeljko Obradovic (2004/05) and he led the Georgia team single-handedly for six years, 2008-2013. He played Eurobasket regularly with them. He became a selector of Slovenia in 2016 and he won the title of the European Champion the year later, beating Serbia in the finals.

FACTS:

*Kokoskov has an American passport since 2010, and during the award ceremony in Phoenix president Barack Obama addressed to him.

* He is married to the American Patrisha, who has Serbian roots and two children, son, and a daughter.

* He is the youngest coach in the history of Serbian basketball who lead a senior team in the first league. He was 24 when he took over OKK Belgrade.

(Telegraf.co.uk / D. Stojmenovic)