Vanja Marinkovic, Baskonia: 'I was the annoying younger brother'

Bitci Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz shooting star Vanja Marinkovic has been surrounded by sports all his life.

Growing up in Belgrade, he followed the example of his brother Voja, who was playing competitive basketball for as long as he can remember. And it wasn’t long before Vanja joined his sibling on the hardwood.

“My brother was playing basketball for about seven or eight years while I was young,” he recalls. “Voja is six years older than me, so when I was four or five years old, he was 10, 11, 12, and I was going to all his games and watching him play. Then I started playing with him in our neighborhood and he was the main reason why I started to play basketball.

"The only sport I wanted to play was tennis because of Novak Djokovic for sure, and basketball."

“I was the annoying younger brother, always hanging around! Voja stopped playing basketball when he got a bit older, but he still follows me and when I played in Partizan he would go to watch my games. He’s my biggest fan!”

Those boyhood games alongside his much older brother gave Marinkovic, whose mother was also a keen basketball player, some valuable early lessons on how to succeed on the court – or, perhaps more accurately, how to avoid being intimidated by bigger and very physical opponents.

“For two or three years, every summer we were playing basketball with guys who were much older than me and it was very competitive,” he says. “They were kicking you, punching you, hitting you, everything. If you’re used to playing with those guys who are older than you, it’s way easier when you then come down to your own level.

“There’s no special skill or technique I learned, but those guys were playing very dirty and I learned you can use some tricks. It’s more a mental thing – how to make your opponent go crazy, make him nervous.”

If that experience gave Marinkovic a few ideas about how to use the dirtier side of the game to his advantage, it was balanced out by the example provided by his father, Zoran.

“My father was a professional football player in the Serbian league and then he became a referee, again in the Serbian league, for 10 or 15 years,” he explains. “He was already a referee when I was born. He was never in the Champions League or anything like that, but he was a professional referee for a long time and now for the last five or six years he still works in football, assessing referees.”

Watching games together with his father gave Marinkovic a good understanding of the tough job facing referees and how players can benefit from their on-court relationships with officials.

He explained: “Sometimes when we’re watching games and some player starts to talk with the referees, complaining about stuff, he’s always like ‘Don’t do that because referees don’t like that. Be nice with them, go and talk with them quietly, not so everybody can see you,’ and stuff like that.

“He is always saying to me, ‘When I was a football referee and a guy starts to complain because of nothing and he keeps on, keeps on, I just put a yellow card, keep on, I put a red card, and you can go and talk on the bench.’ And it’s the same in basketball, some referees don’t like that and if you keep on talking, they’ll give you a warning, then they’ll give you a tech, then if you get another one, you’re out. Complaining too much makes it worse. 80% of the time it’s never going to go your way.

“Sometimes I want to go to the referee and talk to him, make him change his call, but in that half-second, I just think, ‘No, he was right, wait for another play and maybe he’ll give you something else, maybe call a foul for you that wasn’t there.’ If you show some respect to them, they will give it back to you.”

Growing up seeing the development of his father’s career, however, did not give Marinkovic any interest in attempting to follow him into football…or become a referee.

“I was always watching football and I always liked football, but I never wanted to play it,” he states. “The only sport I wanted to play was tennis because of Novak Djokovic for sure, and basketball. But football, never.

“And being a referee? No way! Nice job, but it’s very tough. You have to be aware for the full 40 minutes, one and a half hours of real-time, of the coaches, the players, fans, time, everything. Players get time during a game to rest on the bench, but when you’re a referee you have to be focused for the full game on everything that’s going on in the gym. It’s tough.

“I’m too young to really think about the future, I just think about the next seven days to be honest! Maybe I will want to become a coach or assistant coach, but there is still time to think about that in the future.”