Dejan Milojević

Dejan Milojević (Дејан Милојевић; 15 April 1977 – 17 January 2024) was a Serbian professional basketball player and coach.

At the time of his death, he was an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Milojević began pursuing organized basketball at age 13, signing up for the KK Tašmajdan youth categories in 1990 through a friend who had already been playing there.

Starting out in KK Tašmajdan's youth system, teenage Milojević quickly began dominating over his age group, scoring 141 points in a 202–52 cadet (under-16) win versus OKK Beograd under-16 team in 1991, a still-standing record.

Standing at 6ft 7in, Milojević played professionally as a power forward from 1994 until 2009, appearing for the FR Yugoslavia / Serbia and Montenegro league teams Beovuk, FMP, Budućnost and Partizan, as well as for Pamesa Valencia in Spain, and Galatasaray in Turkey.

He was named the Adriatic League Most Valuable Player three times in a row.

His professional career began with Beovuk in 1994.

The club had won the Yugoslav Cup in recent past (1997); however, instead of adding to the cup-winning squad in search of more trophies, FMP—led by owner Nebojša Čović and sporting director Ratko Radovanović—decided to immediately start selling it off and turn to producing and nurturing young talent in an academy-like setup.

The team still managed to make YUBA League playoff finals in the 1997–98 season; however, the wholesale of the squad players (most of them over the age of 23) continued, with Nikola Jestratijević, Goran Bošković and Dejan Radonjić leaving.

He played there until 1998.

After winning gold with the FR Yugoslavia under-22 national team at the 1998 '22 and Under' European Championship, 21-year-old Milojević joined the YUBA League club FMP from the Belgrade suburb of Železnik.

The squad that Milojević arrived to in summer 1998 thus, almost exclusively, featured fellow young players (either brought up through the FMP youth system or acquired from smaller teams throughout the FR Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro), such as 22-year-old power forward-center Goran Nikolić, 23-year-old center Dragan Basarić, defensively minded 21-year-old swingman Veselin Petrović, 22-year-old shooting guard Aleksandar Smiljanić, 22-year-old power forward Aleksandar Matić, and supremely talented 17-year-old small forward Mladen Šekularac.

Also joining FMP from Beovuk, alongside Milojević, was 19-year-old fellow power forward-center Ognjen Aškrabić.

Beginning the 1998–99 season under head coach Boško Đokić, the young FMP team would be taken over by coach Aco Petrović over the course of the season.

Playing the small forward position (due to being adjudged to be too small for a power forward), Milojević started the season as the team's fourth or fifth option on offense, playing up to 10–15 minutes per game, with his poor outside shooting preventing him from having a bigger role on the team.

FMP managed to pull an upset in the very first game of the league season, beating the reigning champions Crvena zvezda 73–72 behind Vesa Petrović's 21 points as well as his suffocating defence.

FMP managed another notable upset in week 6, destroying the favored Partizan 102–84 with Petrović again leading the pack with 25 points.

Small forward role player Milojević would soon be given a chance at power forward by coach Petrović at a few warm-up games due the team's entire front line of Nikolić, Aškrabić and Basarić getting injured.

Seeing that the power forward spot suited the player much better, coach Petrović continued playing Milojević at the four position despite being considered undersized for it.

Playing high energy basketball, the young team managed some notable scalps that season—including beating both Partizan and Crvena zvezda—en route to an 11–11 mid-table league finish, well out of the spots for playoff that did not even end up being played due to the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia starting on 24 March 1999.

FMP qualified for the 1999 Yugoslav Cup final tournament, played in extraordinary circumstances under air-raid sirens and threat of aerial bombardment on 20–21 April 1999 at Belgrade's Pionir Hall.

After defeating KK Radnički Belgrade in the semis, FMP lost heavily, 80–62, to the Vladislav Lučić-coached Partizan team featuring Dejan Tomašević, Haris Brkić, Miroslav Radošević and Dragan Lukovski, with Milojević scoring the game-high 22 points in front of a packed arena with 7,000 spectators who at one point held up 'Target' signs protesting the NATO assault on Yugoslavia.

While playing a couple of seasons for the club Milojević became famous for his blue-collar and never-quit style of playing.

He averaged a double-double in both of his seasons with FMP and won the league MVP award in 1999.

In 2000, Milojević moved to the Podgorica-based Budućnost, where he won his first National Championship in 2001.

He spent three more seasons there, improving his skills and his game every year.

Already a dominating inside presence, he improved his three-point and free-throw shooting, an area in which he struggled a lot in the early years.

Milojević joined the FR Yugoslav champions Budućnost during summer 2000 in a big-money acquisition that saw the Podgorica club reportedly pay FMP a transfer fee in excess of DM1 million (~€600,000).

Furthermore, during the same transfer window, the club also acquired shooting guard Igor Rakočević and combo guard Saša Obradović from KK Crvena zvezda, both of whom had just finished competing for FR Yugoslavia at the 2000 Olympics, thus indicating the highest level of expectations for the upcoming 2000–01 season.

Playing on a squad coached by Miroslav Nikolić that in addition to high-profile newcomers Rakočević and Obradović also featured established holdovers Dejan Tomašević, Milenko Topić, Vladimir Kuzmanović, Dejan Radonjić and Haris Brkić, new piece Milojević—mostly deployed as Topić's backup at the power forward spot—contributed to Budućnost's domination over the YUBA League competition with a 21–1 regular season record.

The season also saw Milojević make his Euroleague debut in the ULEB version of the competition (without the FIBA-loyal clubs) due to a split between FIBA Europe and ULEB that season.

Drawn in a round robin group with FC Barcelona, P.A.O.K. and Scaligera Verona along with minnows London Towers and Frankfurt Skyliners, Budućnost started the competition with a 6–2 record through their first 8 games, losing only to the FC Barcelona team (featuring Pau Gasol, Šarūnas Jasikevičius and Juan Carlos Navarro) twice.

Milojević played on the Serbia and Montenegro national team, winning EuroBasket gold in 2001.

While in Budućnost he won a couple more league MVP awards, in 2003 and 2004.

Three years after his 2009 retirement from playing professional basketball, Milojević became a head coach for Mega Basket of the Adriatic Basketball Association (ABA).

There, he coached future NBA All-Star and NBA MVP Nikola Jokić.

In the 2015–16 season, he coached Mega to their first-ever trophy, the Serbian Cup, as well as their first ABA League finals appearance.

In 2021, he won Montenegrin League and Montenegrin Cup titles with Budućnost.

In addition to club coaching, Milojević had a coaching stint with the Serbian national team from December 2019 until September 2021, assisting head coach Igor Kokoškov.

Born in Belgrade, Milojević was raised in the suburb of Padinska Skela.