Editor’s note: Todd Spehr’s book, “Drazen: The remarkable life and legacy of the Mozart of basketball,” has the following passage. Drazen One of the first players from Europe to become a major league player, Petrovic was a legend in his native Croatia and soon won over American basketball fans with his flashy, entertaining style of play. The paragraph that follows describes Petrovic’s untimely demise in 1993 and adds some additional information. ‘Drazen,’ which releases on Monday, can be ordered here.
One day around the end of the 1993 regular season, a young woman who spoke broken English called the Nets’ offices regarding Drazen Petrovic. The girl told the secretary in Willis Reed’s office that she was a huge fan and that she practically insisted on a meeting. The girl requested the secretary politely for Petrovic’s phone number, but she declined. The girl was informed, “We don’t give out the personal phone numbers of any of our players or employees.” She was forced to provide Petrovic her own number, which would be sent to him so he could call her if he so desired. After being informed about the inquiry and provided with the number, Petrovic called his friend Mario Miocic to inquire about the best course of action.Because Miocic was four years Petrovic’s senior and somewhat of a protective figure in his life, it was not unusual for Petrovic to ask Miocic for practical counsel. “A girl is requesting me,” Petrovic informed him. “Do you know if she’s German or Croatian?”
Who is that? Miocic responded. Petrovic introduced her to him as Klara Szalantzy.
One day later, Petrovic asked Miocic if he would be at the game that evening over the phone in the early afternoon, as he normally did on game days. He mentioned something about Szalantzy. The number Petrovic had been provided had been answered in a New York hotel where Szalantzy and a companion were staying. Petrovic reported that she appeared amiable and extended an invitation to Szalantzy and her companion to attend the game in New Jersey that evening.That evening, Miocic was in and near his normal quarters at the Meadowlands Arena; the Nets had given him a pass that let him enter the locker room and walk down the hallways. He went to find Petrovic, who was shooting on the floor, and they talked about the women, with Petrovic showing a great deal of curiosity. He informed Miocic about the girls’ seating arrangements and suggested that it could be a good idea for Miocic to make an introduction beforehand in order to verify their legitimacy and tent.
Following the game, Petrovic and Miocic went to eat with Szalantzy and her friend at the Houlihan’s restaurant, which was conveniently located near the arena and was often visited by Nets players following their home games. That night, Miocic sat there and considered the circumstances. He was suspicious of outsiders hoping to make an abrupt entry into his close friend the famous athlete’s world.He tried hard to ascertain the young girls’ exact intentions because he was aware of the kind of females that frequently sought the companionship of athletes or celebrities. Petrovic was renowned for being extremely at ease around his admirers; he frequently obliged them with a picture, a chat, and an autograph, albeit even in those cases, his engagement and participation was restricted. Miocic felt that Petrovic’s sudden infatuation with Szalantzy was peculiar.Szalantzy was a young, attractive woman who was only twenty-three. She had a promising career at the time as a model and an international basketball player. After seeing New York, she and her friend were returning to Europe for a prolonged stay in two days. However, two days ultimately grew into a week. Since leaving her companion behind, Szalantzy had spent most of her time with Petrovic, taking in the sights of the large metropolis.
By the time Szalantzy departed, she and Petrovic had become acquainted and had developed a mutual desire. “The trip was quite brief,” Miocic recalled. “There was no relationship there.” Even after Szalantzy left for Europe, they continued to communicate. As his season came to an end in New Jersey, Petrovic kept in touch with her, even going so far as to give his young acquaintance flowers on a significant occasion. He told Miocic that he would be traveling to Szalantzy in Germany for the summer. The purpose of such trip would be to meet her friends and family, learn more about her personality, and investigate the prospect of a romantic relationship. (Nick Goyak, Petrovic’s lawyer, recalls one such incident from after the season ended in which Petrovic missed a plane to Germany while at home in Zagreb because his mother Biserka failed to get him up in time. Petrovic laughed and admitted to Goyak that his mother had been a little sneaky, being cautious about the long line of women vying for her well-known son.)
After Petrovic’s arrival in Frankfurt on Monday, June 7, following his flight from Wroclaw, the two had planned to meet again. As she had promised, Szalantzy was waiting for Petrovic at the Frankfurt airport in her car, ready to take him to Munich. The two would stay at a hotel the following night after arriving. Hilal Edebal, a buddy who was also a skilled basketball player and had experimented with modeling, traveled with Szalantzy. Basketball was the common bond between the females, who met while playing together on a touring team in Munich. The Hungarian point guard for the squad was named Szalantzy. The center was Edebal, a German-born basketball player who excelled in Turkey and then in American collegiate basketball. During his time as a player with Galatasaray, Edebal was selected the Most Valuable Player of the Turkish league. He also represented the Turkish national team.
Petrovic got into the compact red Volkswagen Golf in the early afternoon and sat on the passenger side as Szalantzy drove.
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The Croatian national team returned to the departure gate and boarded their flight to Zagreb. The airline delayed takeoff as they double-checked their flight numbers; all of the luggage had been checked through, but one passenger was absent. The traveler who vanished was Petrovic. Stepping up as the team’s assistant coach, Aleksandar Petrovic told airline personnel that his brother had booked a different flight.After that, they departed on their little under two-hour journey to Zagreb. A brief hiccup occurred during the flight, causing severe turbulence over Munich, Germany. The passengers were advised to buckle up until the force of the turbulence had passed. Munich had a beautiful early summer day with a high temperature of twenty-six degrees Celsius (seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit), but a thunderstorm moved in late afternoon and affected the city as well as the nearby villages. The rain made the autobahn slippery and challenging, while the sky was getting darker in the distance.
By that point, Szalantzy’s Golf had been driven for a while. They took autobahn three east from Frankfurt to Nuremburg and then took autobahn nine south towards Munich. At some point during the journey, the car stopped, and Petrovic, exhausted from his lack of sleep the previous night, chose to take a nap.
A truck driver from the Netherlands had to swerve just before 5:20 p.m. central European time on the autobahn, some fifteen miles north of Ingolstadt, to avoid a car that had aquaplaned due to the unexpected shower of rain and was approaching his lane. The truck’s driver lost control of it, drove off the road, and crashed through the barrier dividing northbound and southbound traffic. The truck’s startling realization that it was now in the midst of all three southbound lanes left the driver rattled, but he soon recovered his composure.He exited the vehicle and started to wave his hands at passing cars on the side of the road in an attempt to attract their attention as they passed Munich. His goal was to avert a collision. Szalantzy’s Golf accelerated as it got closer to the truck. “Much too quickly,” Edebal remarked. There are speed limitations in Germany, although they are only in certain areas. However, you can travel as quickly as a car on the autobahn. Edebal stated that her friend was traveling at 180 km/h (112 miles per hour), according to the accident report. It put the automobile in an extremely vulnerable position on the wet road.
When Szalantzy noticed the truck, he grabbed the steering wheel firmly with both hands and applied the brakes. The car then slid left, into the guardrail, and back onto the road, with Petrovic’s side, the passenger side, colliding with the truck from the front. It was later assumed that he was asleep at the time of the impact and was not aware of the impending collision.
Szalantzy observed the truck and lost control of the car. She was protected from the worst of the force when the Golf struck the guardrail before it reached the truck. According to a report that was later disclosed, the force caused enough injuries for her to stay in the hospital for a week before she was allowed to go (though the exact amount is unknown because Szalantzy does not publicly disclose any information on the accident or its aftermath). Edebal was in the backseat when the collision happened, sending her flying to the front seat with severe brain damage, a broken arm, and a broken right hip. She barely made it through. A fire crew arrived on the scene shortly after. Atop around 300 liters of diesel that had leaked from the truck’s ding, there was a squashed Golf. All of the truck’s front doors peeled forward as the car’s bonnet was forced squarely into the cab’s front right corner. The two women in the collision appeared to be alive, and rescue personnel swiftly took them away in ambulances. Szalantzy was sent to the Ingolstadt clinic, but Edebal, whose condition was significantly more serious, was flown to the Hospital of Eichstatt. “Three individuals in a car, and three radically different outcomes,” stated Edebal.
Amidst the debris and the rainfall at the collision scene, there was still a young man, and although the rescue crew tried in vain to bring him back to consciousness, they eventually gave up. Petrovic suffered severe head injuries when the force of the impact propelled him directly into the truck since he was not wearing a seatbelt. It took his life in an instant.
He had a gold watch on his left arm at the time, the short hand on the five and the long hand on the twenty, and it stopped exactly when his life did.
The following morning, a few players from the Croatian national team convened in Petrovic’s café, Amadeus, in Zagreb. The café is located close to a basketball stadium that would eventually bear his name. Both Stojko Vrankovic and Aleksandar Petrovic were present, their eyes bloodshot and blurry following a restless night of shock and sadness. One of the team’s younger players, Veljko Mrsic, sat there with his gloomy colleagues as an unsettling silence permeated the space. Mrisc remarked, “Even now, talking about this, I start to cry,” referring to the following morning spent with his distraught brothers. “I just get so angry when I remember that we were in his bar.”
Individuals strolled by on the street outside, with rumors about their hero’s death continuing to spread. “Impossible!” was the headline on the cover of a local publication Sportske novosti on Wednesday.
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The next morning, Tuesday, June 8, the Nets hosted a press conference at the Meadowlands Arena. There was silence in the room. “Simiular to a wake,” John Brennan wrote. Willis Reed was the first to speak. He finished reading from a prepared statement, occasionally pausing to wipe away tears and occasionally looking away from the paper. “It feels like losing a son to me,” he remarked to the few media there. After taking a few questions, Reed’s responses become progressively less specific until eventually he broke down in speech, realizing he could go no farther.
Chuck Then Daly stepped forward, and Brennan saw that he appeared to be a guy whose life had been sucked out of him. Brennan recalled, “Chuck was as unflappable as anyone I ever dealt with, with basketball, with games, with injuries.” However, this was terrible. He kind of looked like someone who had been struck so forcefully in the stomach that the wind had been knocked out of them. Daly talked about how pleased he was with Petrovic’s bold and audacious challenge to his American squad in Barcelona the previous summer.He addressed their occasional disagreements, but came to the conclusion that Petrovic played with such passion, devotion, and intent that a coach could eventually overlook those issues. “There’s no way you can be angry with a player like that,” Daly remarked.”Because he pursued his goals in everything he did.”
Then Daly reminded everyone that nothing was certain, not even for a young man like Petrovic who had a promising future.
“It makes you realize how valuable life is,” Daly said to the press. “And how little we really appreciate.”
