MOST VERSATILE CANADIAN PLAYER ALL-TIME: Steve Nash, Phoenix Suns

Seeing as this is my first entry, I thought I would introduce myself and what I’m planning to discuss in future articles.  My name is Nick Ruzich and I was born, raised and continue to live in London, Ontario, Canada to Croatian parents.  Growing up in the 80’s, the majority of my basketball knowledge came from watching the Lakers play the Celtics pretty much every year in the finals. As for Croatian basketball, I admit that I didn’t know too much about it, and only vaguely remember my parents telling me about the 1989 European Championships in Zagreb. 

But things started to change when the 1992 Olympics came around and Croatia was in their first big tournament as an independent nation.  I still remember my brother excitedly telling me how they came back and beat the Unified Team in the semi-finals when I returned home that day, and my extended family cheering when Franjo Arapovic dunked to take the lead against the Dream Team in the finals and for a moment we could dream of an upset. 

Ever since, I’ve been hooked and I’ve been following the national team as closely as I can from North America.  Studying to be an engineer for the last 11 years, it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of numbers, so for the last few years I’ve been attempting to collect stats for every official game (i.e. Eurobasket and Eurobasket Qualifying, Olympics and Olympic qualifying, World Championships) for both the senior and junior national teams. 

So a lot of my articles will be based on these stats I’ve collected, since I haven’t been able to see the majority of the games that have been played.  I will also talk about some of my personal experiences seeing Croatia play, Croatians that have played in the NBA (which I have also collected stats for), and the current state of the national team.  As well, being from Canada I will also occasionally discuss the Canadian Men’s national team, both past and present. 

Nick Ruzich, Canadian correspondent