Bowing down to the legends: Ivo Daneu

The best Slovenian basketball player of all time, Ivo Daneu, was born on October 6, 1937 in Maribor. In the Štajerska capital, one of the greats of world basketball also made his first steps on the basketball court, leaving the biggest mark in Slovenian, Yugoslav, European and world basketball as a basketball player for AŠK Olimpija.

Interestingly, basketball was not Ivo Daneu’s first love. He sailed into it after receiving a powerful shot with a ball to the head in one of the football training sessions that accompanied him from the side. Shortly before the middle of the last century, Daneu first picked up a basketball and began writing history.

Before moving from Maribor to Ljubljana, Daneu had numerous offers to play basketball abroad. He was called from Belgrade’s Partizan and one of the German clubs. Daneu did not want to go to Germany at the time, as he and his family were deported to Serbia in 1941 as a child, and the only team that came into play was AŠK Olimpija.

At his 185 centimeters, Ivo Daneu was extremely motor and shooting capable, and he played as a game organizer and defender. Immediately after his move to Ljubljana, he became the national champion of Yugoslavia with AŠK Olimpija, and he wore the jersey of the Ljubljana club in all the years when the team from Rožnik sat on the Yugoslav basketball throne. The last title of the Yugoslav national champion was won by AŠK Olimpija in 1970. In the same year, the Yugoslav national team won gold medals at the domestic World Championships, and Ivo retired the same year.

Mentioning the Yugoslav national team, we cannot ignore the fact that Daneu has as many as nine medals from various international competitions in his showcases. He won four, three silver and one bronze medal at the European Championships, won silver with Yugoslavia at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, and Daneu won two more silver medals with Yugoslavia at the 1970 World Championships. In 1959, at the Mediterranean Games in Lebanon, he won his first medal with the Yugoslav national team as a member of the selected team of the former Commonwealth. In 1967, Daneu was also the most valuable player of the World Cup, which took place in Montevideo.

As already noted, Daneu said goodbye to active basketball in 1970 after the World Cup. At that time, Ljubljana was breathing for basketball, and Ivo, as the captain of the national team, triumphantly lifted the trophy for the best in the world in front of the home audience. Daneu watched almost the entire championship from the bench due to a muscle injury in his right leg, but when it was time for the Yugoslav national team to win the match, selector Žeravica knew who to turn to. Daneu entered the game in the last minutes of the clash with the United States national team and scored two decisive baskets, with which he secured a gold medal for Yugoslavia.

In 2007, Daneu was selected to FIBA’s Hall of Fame, and he is also recorded in history as one of the 50 best players to ever play in the umbrella basketball organization’s competitions. The number 13 jersey still hangs under the ceiling of the beauty of the cone and serves as a reminder of the greatness that only Ivo Daneu could muster.