SRB - Serbia get trio on board

BELGRADE (EuroBasket 2007) - NBA trio Peja Stojakovic, Nenad Krstic and Darko Milicic have all confirmed their intention to play for Serbia in EuroBasket 2007.

Both Stojakovic and Krstic missed the FIBA World Championship this summer with a young Serbia & Montenegro side - competing as one for the final time - exiting at the round of 16 stage with a loss to eventual champions Spain.

But newly-independent Serbia will be far stronger at next September’s EuroBasket following the commitment from their leading players.

Orlando Magic center Milicic told the Sportska Centrala agency that he is “desperately waiting to play in the jersey of Serbia” next year, while adding that Dragan Sakota - who coached Serbia & Montenegro in Japan this summer - had told him Stojakovic will also travel.

“Sakota told us that Peja will be at EuroBasket2007, and that it will be the first but also the last competition he'll participate in as a member of the Serbian national team," said Milicic, who was the second overall pick by Detroit in the 2003 NBA Draft.

The return to independence for Serbia for the first time in 88 years has awoken new emotions in the nation’s sportsmen, and the basketball players are no exception.

Stojakovic’s return is not a complete surprise - the New Orleans Hornets forward stated his intention to play at EuroBasket when excusing himself from World Championship duty due to a knee problem - but there were no guarantees with Krstic.

The New Jersey Nets’ starting center agonised about whether to play in Japan but eventually chose to remain in the United States over the summer to concentrate on his NBA career.

That created doubts about his international future, but he has now committed himself to the Serbian cause.

"It was hard for me not to be there (in Japan) with my friends and team-mates,” he said.

"I had a lot of doubts about whether to go to Japan or not, but that story is behind us now.

"From now on, I would like to be a member of Serbian national team."

Milicic - who remains the youngest player ever to appear in an NBA Finals after playing for Detroit at the age of 18 years and 356 days in 2004 - was the only member of the trio to play in Japan, but he has renewed enthusiasm about representing an independent Serbia.

"I don’t have anything against the past, but since we changed our country’s name to Serbia & Montenegro after the other Yugoslav republics got their independence, everything started to collapse in our basketball," he said, recalling Yugoslavia’s back-to-back FIBA World Championship titles in 1998 and 2002.

"We were sixth at EuroBasket 2003 and then second last at the Olympics in Athens, and finally we crashed out of the European Championships in our own country and then this year in Japan.

"But now, with our old coat of arms and national anthem, forbidden during the Yugoslavia era, it will be different I’m sure.

"Maybe it’s funny, but I feel that when, for the first time I hear and sing our Serbian national anthem, "God of Justice", I feel I’ll be able to dunk from behind the arc."

PA Sport