Split KK

Two names come up whenever KK Split takes the floor: KK Cibona Zagreb, opposite them in the Premijerligaški derbi — the Derbi Vukova i Žutih, Wolves against Yellows — and KK Zadar, in what is simply called the Dalmatinski derbi. Neither needs explaining to anyone in Split.

The club grew out of the basketball section of Hajduk, split off as an independent body in 1948 and took the name KK Split a year later. For most of its strongest years it did not play under that name at all: sponsorship carried it through spells as Jugoplastika, POP 84, Slobodna Dalmacija and Croatia Osiguranje, and it was as Jugoplastika, in 1989, 1990 and 1991, that the club won the European Champions Cup three times running, beating Maccabi Tel Aviv and then FC Barcelona twice.

Everything since has been measured against it. A domestic league title arrived in 2003, and the Croatian Cup has come round seven times. The Korać Cup belongs to an earlier era still, won in 1976 and 1977.

Mala dvorana Gripe holds about a thousand, a small hall for a club with three European Cups to its name, and it fills for the derbies rather than the ordinary league games.

Dino Rađa played alongside him through the same run.