Dino Rađa

Dino Rađa (Anglicized: Dino Radja, ; born April 24, 1967) is a Croatian former professional basketball player.

He was a member of the Jugoplastika team of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which he helped to win two FIBA European Champions Cup championships (1989 and 1990).

He spent three and a half seasons with the Boston Celtics, being one of the European pioneers in the NBA.

The duo led the team to dominance of the FIBA European Champions Cup, with repeat championship seasons in (1989 and 1990).

On 27 June 1989, two days after winning the EuroBasket 1989 championship with Yugoslavia and making the All-Tournament Team, the 22-year-old center got drafted by the Boston Celtics in the second round as the 40th pick.

Rađa was reportedly on a vacation in Bologna, Italy with his girlfriend while the Celtics were drafting him in New York City's Felt Forum.

Right away, he publicly expressed willingness to immediately go to Boston "if the financial offer is good", and thus join fellow Yugoslavs Vlade Divac, Dražen Petrović, and Žarko Paspalj, who were also on their way to the NBA that summer.

After weeks of wrangling over his status, Rađa tried to force Jugoplastika's hand by travelling to the U.S. and, on 1 August 1989, unilaterally signing a one-year contract with the Celtics, reportedly worth in the neighborhood of US$500,000.

He furthermore began practicing with the team at their Brandeis University training facilities.

However, seeing the situation as a clear case of contract poaching by Boston and its general manager Jan Volk (who claimed Rađa's contract with Jugoplastika was amateur and thus non-binding), the Split club would not budge.

Jugoplastika hired legal representation from the New York City-based Parcher, Arisohn & Hayes law firm, seeking an injunction to prevent Rađa from playing for the Celtics on the grounds that he has a valid and legally binding contract with them and further looking for US$6 million in damages on the grounds of "damaged reputation and lost income".

The case ended up before the United States district court for the District of Massachusetts.

Following a hearing on 26 September 1989, Judge Douglas Woodlock ruled in Jugoplastika's favor two days later thus preventing Rađa from staying with the Celtics.

Since the player was physically already in Boston, bringing him back to Yugoslavia required some kind of an agreement.

Rađa was thus back in Split for the 1989–90 season.

That same season, Jugoplastika again won the Yugoslav League, its third consecutive national domestic league title, as well as its second straight FIBA European Champions Cup.

Some observers saw Virtus' sudden and lucrative contract offer to Rađa as their retribution to the Celtics for going to court a few months earlier over enforcing Virtus' point guard Brian Shaw's NBA contract and winning the case even after the player, who had spent the preceding 1989-90 season with Virtus, tried to remain in Rome.

By mid-November 1989, Jugoplastika and the Celtics agreed to terms under which the center went back to complete the 1989–90 season in Split before having the rights to his services transferred to the Celtics effective 1 June 1990.

The deal centered around the Celtics paying an undisclosed sum of money to Jugoplastika, which in turn agreed to let Rađa go two years short of his contract's completion.

Despite the team's success, as previously agreed, Rađa would not stay in Split past June 1990 thus relinquishing the chance to go for the historic FIBA European Champions Cup three-peat (which the club, led by Kukoč, achieved the following year), but he would not go to Boston either.

In August 1990, instead of going to the NBA as previously agreed, Rađa ended up in Italy, signing with the wealthy Virtus Roma despite claiming all along that he had wanted to join the Celtics.

He had a change of heart once Virtus, an ambitious and financially stable club bankrolled by the Gruppo Ferruzzi food company and sponsored by the Il Messaggero daily broadsheet, made him an offer reportedly in the US$15–18 million range for a 5-year contract.

Italian and Yugoslav newspapers reported that Rađa's L3.6 billion (~US$3 million) annual salary at the time at Virtus was higher than soccer superstars Diego Maradona's and Roberto Baggio's annual compensations at Napoli and Juventus, respectively.

The Boston Celtics did not insist on Rađa honouring his commitment to them, instead letting the twenty-three-year-old go to Virtus in return for an undisclosed amount, but retaining his NBA rights.

Reportedly, part of the reason Boston did not put up much of a fight when the player suddenly decided to sign with Virtus was the July 1990 court decision against them following a motion by Rađa's American agent, Marc Fleisher, after the Virtus offer came in.

Taking advantage of an administrative loophole, Fleisher claimed that Rađa's contract with the Celtics violated a provision of the agreement between the league and the NBA players that said, among other things, that one-year contracts could not be extended.

A special officer of the court had heard the case and ruled in Rađa's favour, against the Celtics.

Simultaneous to the legal battle his agent was waging over the future of his club career, Rađa had been spending the summer of 1990 with the Yugoslav national team in a four-month 1990 FIBA World Championship training camp that included an appearance at the 1990 Goodwill Games in Seattle where the 23-year-old suffered a leg fracture in the final game against the U.S. national team, ruling him out of the World Championship that started a week later.

Yugoslavia head coach Dušan Ivković later revealed that injured Rađa and the center's agent Marc Fleisher asked him not to publicly disclose the player's injury before the deal with Virtus is signed, which Ivković consented to.

Rađa was named one of FIBA's 50 Greatest Players in 1991, and one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008.

However, led by the club's general manager Josip Bilić, vice-president Igor Katunarić, and executive board vice-president Željko Jerkov, Jugoplastika was adamant Rađa would not be released since they had him under contract until 1992.

The entire case quickly turned into a months-long saga that played out in the Yugoslav media.

The club's head coach, Božidar Maljković, even publicly called on the Yugoslav Basketball Association (KSJ) to adopt safeguard policies, preventing players younger than age 26 from transferring to NBA teams.

In 2005, commenting on his summer 1990 decision to stay in Europe, even after only a year prior seeming desperately intent on playing in the NBA, Rađa said: I was playing well.

I was making a great salary in Europe.

He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, as a member of the 2018 class.

He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame, in 2022.

Rađa began his basketball life in his native town, as a junior at KK Dalvin.

He moved to KK Split, which at the time went under the name of its longtime naming-rights sponsor Jugoplastika.

At KK Split, Rađa starred alongside Toni Kukoč, while both were teenagers.