Few people carry such authority that when they enter a room, everyone falls silent. One of them is the great Dušan Duda Ivković, a coach who brought us immense joy with gold medals and a man whose name became synonymous with basketball throughout Europe.
In his remarkable career, he led many great basketball clubs, from KK Partizan to Olympiacos B.C. and PBC CSKA Moscow, as well as the Yugoslav national team, with which he lost only one final.
Duda Ivković was born on October 29, 1943, in the Crveni Krst neighborhood of Belgrade, in the midst of the occupation, as the fourth child. On his mother’s side, he was related to the famous scientist Nikola Tesla, who had passed away 10 months and 22 days before Duda’s birth. Thus, young Dušan was the only baby in the family to whom Tesla did not send a gold ducat—a gesture Nikola, following an old Serbian custom, used to make whenever the family welcomed a new member.
His best friend from school days was the late actor Dragan Nikolić, with whom he first shared a desk and later, as they grew older, time in cafés.
He entered the world of basketball in 1958 thanks to his older brother Slobodan “Piva” Ivković, who was already training at Radnički at the time. Duda would remain with this club throughout his entire playing career, until 1968.
His first coach was the renowned Bora Cenić, after which he trained under Ranko Žeravica. He practiced all day in the small gym of Radnički, alongside boxers—he even briefly tried boxing himself—wrestlers, and other athletes, working diligently. During winter, he played in tournaments in the old DIF hall, where the top teams from across Serbia would gather.
After finishing his professional playing career, Ivković immediately transitioned into coaching, also at Radnički—again influenced by his brother Piva, whom Dušan always considered a better coach than himself.
At first, Duda handled organization of games and travel until one day, in 1968, Bora Cenić offered him the chance to work with the team. Four years later, he began receiving a salary while working with Radnički’s cadets, and he won the national championship with the junior team.
At the age of 35, Ivković was invited by his former coach Ranko Žeravica, then head coach of Partizan, to become an assistant coach. After just one season, Duda took over Partizan and, with stars like Dragan Kićanović and Dražen Dalipagić, won three trophies in what was then the strongest league in Europe: the Yugoslav Championship, the Yugoslav Cup, and the Radivoj Korać Cup.
After three years at Partizan, Ivković moved to Greece to coach Aris in Thessaloniki. Over the next eight years, he shared his knowledge with players at Radnički again, as well as Šibenka and Vojvodina—clubs that were struggling and in desperate need of guidance.
Duda did not chase money. His goal was to develop great players and build Yugoslav basketball. He also served as assistant coach of the Yugoslav national team under Krešimir Ćosić at the 1986 World Championship and the 1987 European Championship in Athens. By 1988, Ivković became head coach and went on to win a silver medal at the Seoul Olympics, as well as gold medals at the 1989 European Championship in Zagreb, the 1990 World Championship in Argentina, and the 1991 European Championship in Rome.
He passed away on September 16, 2021, at the age of 77.
