The High-priced Yugo

Petrović doesn't smoke. While a law student at the University of Zagreb, he was a more than capable pupil. Indeed, he enjoys an Every Babushka's Son status in his homeland, where he's a sort of national epoxy, binding together Yugoslavia's sundry native peoples, six republics and three religions. During his finest season with Cibona Zagreb, 1985-86, he received hundreds of fan letters a day. "That year Cibona was special and Dražen was young and everybody was saying, 'Good boy, good student, good player,' " says Zoran Kovačević, a reporter with Sprint, a Zagreb-based sports weekly. "People wanted to see their children do everything just as Dražen did, in university and everyday life."

As annoying as such near-perfection might seem, it hardly explains why Petrovic is so widely reviled. A succession of on-court episodes does. As the final seconds ticked down in Cibona's 1985 European Cup semifinal win at Real Madrid, Dražen and his older brother Aleksandar, for three seasons his back-court mate, stood near midcourt, tongues derisively out, passing the ball between them while laughing at the crowd. He spat at a referee during one game at the 1986 world championships in Madrid, and he joined his brother in retreating downcourt after big baskets, arms out and dipping from side to side like airplanes.

The '86 worlds turned out to be brazen Dražen's comeuppance. When Yugoslavia took a nine-point lead against the Soviets with less than a minute to play in the semifinals, Dražen and Aleksandar simply stopped playing. They waved their hands wildly at the Spanish fans, who had long since wearied of the Petrovićs during the fortnight. As the Soviets sank one three-pointer, then another and finally another to tie the game—they would go on to win in overtime—something even more spectacular happened: A Western European crowd discovered villains loathsome enough to get them to root for the Soviets.

Many European players, coaches and observers say Dražen has matured considerably since then. "They must have talked to Petrović and given him a role on the team," said Jens Kujawa, the former Illinois center and a member of the West German team, while watching the Yugoslavs at the European Olympic qualifying tournament in Rotterdam in July. "It used to be Petrović and everyone else. Now he lets the game come to him. He still gets his 20 or 25, but his teammates aren't just standing around."

Perhaps his brother's departure—Aleksandar, now 29, left Cibona last season for Scavolini Pesaro of the Italian league, and he is no longer on the Yugoslav national team—has caused Petrović to moderate his enfant-terrible act. But the rebel is still in him: After Yugoslavia looked ragged in Rotterdam against Great Britain, Petrović said, "We take a lead of 10 points, then we play for the fast break, for the fans." And he's not exactly contrite about the international incidents he has nearly touched off. "For me it is all part of playing the game."

Given Petrović's petulant outbursts in Spain, it's astonishing that Real has asked its supporters to suddenly embrace him. When the deal was announced, there was much speculation about how Petrović would get along with Juan Itturiaga, the Real Madrid veteran with whom he once got into a celebrated fight. At least there was a lot of speculation until Real Madrid's president announced, soon thereafter, that Itturiaga wouldn't be back next season. Petrović grins when this is brought up. Will his Real Madrid teammates accept him? "I do not know," says Petrović. "We have to see this situation. I go in as a diplomat."

Study Petrović's career and you'll detect signs of the stormy futility that beset another Balkan-blooded hot dog, the late Pete Maravich. Journalists who have followed the Yugoslav can tick off his prodigious scoring feats, yet they grope to remember a late shot that won a game. In six seasons on the national team, he has won only one international gold of any note, at the World University Games—a competition in which only accredited students may play—in Zagreb last summer. And with Petrović anchoring its backcourt, mighty Cibona has lost just six games in the past three regular seasons but has failed every year in the playoffs.

The second of those flameouts, in 1987, ended with a home court loss to Red Star of Belgrade on a layup that the brothers Petrović felt had done Lawrence Welk one better. When a whistle wasn't forthcoming, Aleksandar paid the referees an unauthorized post-game dressing-room visit, and Dražen was moved to empty a bottle of mineral water over the head of some courtside apparatchik. For this display of fraternal funning, Aleksandar was suspended for eight games, Dražen for three. "He's introverted off the court, but extroverted on," says Jos Kuipers, the former Fresno State forward and a Dutch national team member. "It's as if basketball is his means of expression."

Petrović is aware of the weaknesses in his game. Sometimes he looses the law student within him on the referees, and his game suffers accordingly. "I am captain," he says, shrugging. "I must talk with referee." He also recognizes his susceptibility to the Yugoslav national affliction: an indifference to defense. Petrović has that problem figured out. "If I have many assists on offense, the other players help me," he says. "I give three or four to [7-foot Celtic-signee Stojan] Vranković for dunks, and after that he blocks shot if my man goes inside."

Petrović gleaned this and other insights into the game while growing up in Šibenik, an industrial port city of some 80,000 people on the Adriatic Sea. Šibenik is studded with palm trees, but otherwise it could be most any Indiana hoops spawning ground, a New Castle or Muncie or Richmond. Young Dražen toted Aleksandar's gym bag to practice and soon enough began modeling his flamboyant game after NBA players he watched on regular telecasts over Italy's Canale 5, easily picked up in Šibenik. The Petrović family apartment was a short walk from Dražen's school, so he finagled a key to the gym and—well, the only point at which the story doesn't follow the Hoosier model is that Dražen's father, Jole, was the chief of police, not the local high school coach.