The Serbia Men's Basketball Team won the bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics, an incredible achievement by any measure. However, they just missed out on the chance to play in the gold medal game after a heartbreaking loss to Team USA.
Team Serbia continued to make headlines after the Olympics were over with the way they went all-out in celebrating their bronze medal, including three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic spending $375,500 to get all of his Serbian teammates Rolexes.
Atlanta Hawks guard Bogdan Bogdanovic, who starred for Serbia on their way to the bronze, spoke to Marc Stein about celebrating despite falling short of the gold medal.
“We celebrated like we did win,” Bogdanovic said.
Bogdanovic's response makes sense. In Olympic basketball, while the gap is certainly closing it is still almost a foregone conclusion that Team USA will win the gold medal. This year, Serbia lost by just four points in the semifinal to Team USA, the eventual gold medal winners.
Serbia, a country of just 6.7 million people, about the size of the state of Indiana, was able to push the mighty Americans to the brink and still capture a medal by beating Germany in the bronze medal match. They proudly represented their country, showed the world how good Serbia is at basketball and came home with some hardware.
The golden age of Serbia basketball
This current generation of Serbia basketball is having one of the most successful stretches of play from a European team in international basketball history.
Led by NBA stars like Jokic and Bogdanovic and EuroLeague stalwarts like Aleksa Avramovic and Ognjen Dobric, Serbia has captured second place finishes at the FIBA World Cup in 2014 and 2023, second place finish at EuroBasket in 2017, a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and of course a bronze at this year's Olympics.
The main catalyst for Serbia's success on the international stage is of course Jokic, who has shown that he is one of, if not the best player in the world. Serbia has found a recipe for success by surrounding their playmaking superstar with shooters, allowing him to draw double teams and kick the ball out to the open man.
While an Olympic gold medal still eludes Serbia, they've still had an incredible dominant stretch capped off by an impressive showing in Paris. They made their country proud, and deserve to celebrate their accomplishments even though they came up just short of the ultimate prize.
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