The Croatian play-caller spoke with David Hein about his past experiences, his return to Trefl and how he sees the future of basketball in Poland
Trefl head coach Zan Tabak: 'Polish basketball has huge potential'
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6 Mins read
Trefl Sopot is back in the BKT EuroCup for the first time since the 2012-13 season and Zan Tabak, the club’s head coach, is excited about the future of basketball in Poland.
Tabak was head coach for Trefl the last time it was in the EuroCup and the 54-year-old is in year three back with the club, having guided Trelf to its first Polish League championship last season.
“We are really excited to be back in the EuroCup because this was our main goal when I signed the long-term deal with Trefl,” Tabak, who returned to Trefl in 2022, tells David Hein. “One of the objectives was to put the team back in Europe, where it was many years ago.”
Tabak knows about elite basketball. He was a member of the famous Jugoplastika Split team that won the EuroLeague title three years on the trot, from 1988 to 1991, and he won an Olympic silver medal in 1992 while playing for Croatia against the USA’s famous Dream Team in Barcelona. He also won the 1995 NBA championship alongside Hakeem Olajuwon with the Houston Rockets.
After retiring in 2005, he was an assistant coach for Real Madrid, where together they won the EuroCup in 2007 and the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague in 2015. Tabak has been a head coach in Europe’s premier club basketball competition, too, having led Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz and Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv.
Most of his success as a play-caller has come in Poland, where he guided Trefl to the 2012 Polish Super Cup and then led Zielona Gora to the 2020 Polish Super Cup and Polish League title, in addition to the 2021 Polish National Cup.
Tabak left Trefl back in November 2012 and took over as Baskonia head coach after the Spanish club fired Dusko Ivanovic, yet he knew his departure from the Polish side was going to be a matter of when, not if.
“Trefl was in a really tough financial situation. My contract was a burden for the team,” Tabak recalls. “The objectives of the team changed because of the sudden problems in the financial situation. We came to mutual agreement.”
“That season was a big learning experience for me, and I believe the best teaching lessons are learned from your own mistakes. I think what I learned most at that time was about group leadership and the group energy,” he says of his season with Baskonia, which he led to the team making the EuroLeague Playoffs before losing the series 3-1 to CSKA Moscow.
Tabak stayed in contact with the bosses at Trefl and talked to them again in the spring of 2022 after being fired from Spanish outfit San Pablo Burgos in November 2021. He was apprehensive that the team would not be playing in a European competition in 2022-23, but the long-term vision appealed to him.
He then guided Trefl back to the Polish League playoffs in his first year. Then, last season, the team finished second in the regular-season standings but came back from a 3-1 deficit in the finals against King Szczecin to secure the club’s first league crown.
“I believe it was not expected because we didn't have the most talented group of players, but we had the best team,” Tabak states. “We had the best connection, the best chemistry between the players, and each one of them gave their maximum at every moment. Me being the one who could bring that to Sopot, it's a great feeling.”
Over the course of his career, Tabak has seen basketball take big steps in Poland. The country reached the FIBA EuroBasket 2022 semifinals for the first time since 1969, and it finished eighth at the 2019 FIBA World Cup on its first appearance since 1967.
Tabak, however, believes the national team’s performance is not a true indicator of a country’s strength but rather how many of its teams are playing in European club competitions.
Poland has a representative in the EuroCup for the fourth straight season and sixth in the last seven years. King Szczecin and Slask Wroclaw are both playing this season in the Basketball Champions League, PGE Spojnia Stargard and Anwil Wloclawek are competing in the FIBA Europe Cup, and Legia Warsaw and Dziki Warsaw are playing in the European North Basketball League (ENBL).
“I believe the infrastructure and clubs’ organization have gone up since I was here the first time. I see the country with huge potential,” he proclaims, particularly given Poland’s population of 38 million people.
"It's a really big country. Its economy is doing really good. And I believe Polish people, genetically, have a really good predisposition to play basketball. I think Polish basketball has, in the last 10 years, definitely gone way up.”
Tabak now thinks those at the top of Polish basketball need to work on making the game more popular and also increase the money in the sport in order to keep the country’s best players in Poland.
“I believe that Polish basketball needs to get to the level where all Polish players, the best Polish players, are staying in Poland,” he says. “This needs to come through a longer period of lifting all of Polish basketball to the next level.
“Polish clubs need to financially be stronger and play a bigger role in Europe so that they are attractive for the best Polish players to stay in Poland.”
Olek Balcerowski, for example, is on the books at Unicaja Malaga this season after helping Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens win the EuroLeague title last May. Mateusz Ponitka is with Bahcesehir College Istanbul in the EuroCup after spending five seasons in the EuroLeague, Michal Sokolowski is with Dinamo Sassari in his fifth season abroad, while Jeremy Sochan is in the NBA. Young prospect Igor Milicic is in his fourth season in college in the United States and Jakub Niziol played in the EuroCup last season with Slask Wroclaw, but he now plays in France for State Rochelais.
If they were all playing for Polish clubs, things would look a lot different. Just like Zan Tabak believes.