Denver Nuggets forward Dario Šarić doesn’t just represent the present of Croatian basketball—he carries its past every time he steps on the floor.
Before he was an NBA pro, before he was a EuroLeague MVP candidate, Šarić was a wide-eyed kid soaking in stories of greatness from his father—a former professional basketball player who went head-to-head with legends during the days of Yugoslavia’s golden basketball era.
“I was about 7 or 8 and I was a big Toni Kukoč fan when he was with the Bulls,” Šarić recalled. “Because my father was a basketball player and he used to play against those folks like Toni Kukoč and Petrović at the time when it used to be Yugoslavia back then.”
For Šarić, admiration for Kukoč wasn’t just about championships or highlights on VHS tapes. It was personal—passed down like folklore in the Šarić household.
“So he would play against some Serbian guys who made it in the NBA, and so I heard a lot of stories about Kukoč and how he was an all-around player being 6’11” sharing the ball, playing at a high level, playing that great role with the Chicago Bulls…” Šarić said, trailing off with reverence. “It was just so easy for him. Like, being the MVP of the Final Four of the EuroLeague when he was young… it was a great career.”
While Kukoč taught him the beauty of versatility, Dražen Petrović represented something different—grit, sacrifice, and unrelenting work ethic.
“Of course I heard it from him—like, my hometown—and Dražen Petrović is from there. And so my father played with him,” Šarić said. “I heard a lot more stories about him, about his work ethic and that kind of stuff.”
That familiarity shaped Šarić’s identity as a player who mixes finesse with fire. From Petrović’s intensity to Kukoč’s all-around mastery, Šarić’s game is a modern echo of a golden age.
“So I’m kind of familiar with all this ‘old school’ because my father used to play basketball with them.”
Now a veteran presence himself in Denver’s rotation, Šarić is one of the few NBA players uniquely equipped to connect generations—bridging Luka Dončić’s brilliance to the foundation laid by the original European pioneers. He doesn’t just wear the Croatian flag on his jersey. He wears it on his heart, forged by the stories of Kukoč and Petrović, two men who helped make Šarić’s dream even possible.
