BELGRADE (Serbia) - How many times have you been impressed with the Serbian national team lately?
Think about FIBA EuroBasket 2022 Group Phase, when they looked unstoppable. Think about their sprint through the field at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023. Or just rewind a year back, when they were inches away from creating history at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
"We want to finally win the championship."
And yet, with the rest of the world in awe and five major event medal over the past 11 years, they still have something on their to-do list any time they get together to start the summer training camp.
"We want to finally win the championship. This is our wish, but we know it's not guaranteed just because of our previous success," captain Bogdan Bogdanovic said at the press conference, ready to deal with the burden of being one of the front-runners.
"We felt pressure since the day we started playing basketball. You only learn to deal with it in time."
One way to deal with it? Make the national team one giant family, with everybody looking forward to reunions even after tiresome club seasons all over the world.
"I really missed everyone. What we did in previous years left a special mark on my life. Not only the medals, but the whole story. Because of everything we've been through, this championship is special. We're only missing one medal," Nikola Milutinov also pointed towards gold in Riga.
But while the players are pretty open about their dreams, the wise man at the helm pulled the handbrake, knowing there's a whole month before the FIBA EuroBasket 2025 tips off.
"We're in the business of elite sports, and wins and gold medals are what's expected from us," Svetislav Pesic said.
"This event is different compared to Manila and Paris, as this is the strongest competition. We have eight-nine-ten teams fighting for medals."
The legendary coach expects the closest event ever, not just because of the teams that have been on podiums in recent events, but also because of the strength of those who haven't, such as their Group A rivals Latvia and Türkiye.
"The last FIBA Basketball World Cup saw two top European teams in the Final, and the last Olympics had three European teams in top four. Why am I saying this? Because we need to go in depth, not setting some unrealistic goals. The realistic ones are already hardly attainable," Pesic explained.
A gigantic sporting nation, Serbia has had plenty of heroes, plenty of winners, hence plenty of recipes how to reach those aforementioned realistic and unrealistic goals.
Perhaps the most notable one is Novak Djokovic, and his tactic of visualizing success and the power of imagining or manifesting, which he talked about plenty of times.
However, Bogdan Bogdanovic is taking a different approach when asked about visualizing success.
"When you share it with somebody, it loses value. Those biggest things, they are happening in silence. We'll keep it to ourselves."
Maybe they share it with the rest of the world on September 14, the day of the FIBA EuroBasket 2025 Final.
Pesic's experience, that familiar feeling within a team, plus the superstardom of Nikola Jokic and Bogdan Bogdanovic - Serbia got all the tools to finally make their dreams become reality.
FIBA