ON THIS DAY 22 YEARS AGO MEGA WAS FOUNDED

On this day 22 years ago, Mega was founded!

Namely, since December 23, 1998, when it was founded under the name of Basktetball Club Avala Ada, Mega has come a long way from the basketball section of the cardboard packaging factory to the only team outside the US that had 3 players selected in the same NBA draft on 3 occasions and with a total of 12 drafted players so far, it belongs to the very top of Europe. It is interesting that the sports director of that team was Velimir Mihailovic, who spent all these years in the club and today he is the president of BC Mega Soccerbet.

Starting from the non-league, the club gradually progressed in the ranks of the competition, reaching the First League in 2005, and 8 years later, at the end of the 2012/13 season, Mega secured a place in the ABA league under coach Dejan Milojevic. After 2 cup finals in 2014 and 2015 year, Mega achieved the greatest success in the history of the club by winning the Radivoj Korac Cup in 2016, and as a confirmation of the historic season, they reached the finals of the ABA League playoffs. The following season, Mega was a participant in the premiere season of the FIBA ​​Champions League, and this season’s edition of the ABA League, in which coach Vladimir Jovanovic’s team currently shares first place, is the eighth in a row in which the club participates.

However, what made Mega famous in the entire basketball world, apart from the original jerseys, is the fact that it is a real factory of players for the strongest basketball league in the world. To date, as many as twelve Mega players have been selected in the NBA Draft, and five have gone directly from the club to the NBA League. The most famous among them is Nikola Jokic, once a member of the first and second best team in the NBA and a two times All-Star participant. Beside him among Mega’s former players in the strongest league in the world are Ivica Zubac, Goga Bitadze, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, Vlatko Cancar and Boban Marjanovic, who was the MVP of KLS in the Mega’s jersey in the 2012/13 season. Also one of Mega’s former players in the NBA is Adam Mokoka, who has signed a bilateral contract with the Chicago Bulls.

In addition to the mentioned players, numerous former and current members of the Serbian national team also played for Mega, such as Vasilije Micic, Stevan Jelovac, Novica Velickovic, Marko Keselj… In the years to come, Mega will not deviate from its recognizable work system, so as the convincingly youngest team, Mega will continue to provide an opportunity for promising players to gain much-needed experience that will lead them to the national team and NBA clubs in the future.

Photo: Mega Soccerbet/Ivica Veselinov