Belgrade Basketball.

From helping lead the Cinderella of college basketball in my lifetime -- George Mason -- into the Final Four last April, to playing at Belgrade's Red Star arena while suited up for Split (Croatia) in December. And he gets benched midway through the third quarter, because his Croatian team is getting run, and it's point guard is not not helping much.

We call that a fall from grace back in the land where basketball was invented.

Congratulations, Tony Skinn. And God speed on your journey through life in basketball after your One Shining Moment last spring.


Did anyone else see highlights of the mayhem that broke out the last time Red Star's basketball club played, just a few days before the Split game? Six fans were reportedly injured in a riot between fans of KK Crvena Zvezda (Red Star), and the supporters of Crvena Zvezda's biggest Belgrade rival, Partizan. This went on in the stands, with riot police helpless to stop the fighting for several minutes.

The only thing that didn't add up was that Red Star wasn't actually playing Partizan. They were playing a Greek team, PAOK Thessaolonik. The Partizan fans -- who hate Red Star, though both names are loaded with connotations of a Communist past -- have an "alliance" with PAOK's fans, just as Red Star supporters maintain one with PAOK's hated enemy: ... damn I should have written the name of that team down. Let's just go with Olympiakos*, since it's the one that is resonating the most clearly.

Olympiakos* plays Partizan in Belgrade? Red Star fans come to start a brawl. Red Star plays PAOK in Greece? Olympiakos* fans go to start a brawl. Partizan heads down there to play Olympiakos*? PAOK fans are the proxy warriors. And PAOK plays Red Star in Belgrade? Just click on the link above, and you'll see what happens.


As intense as derbies are, the four of us -- Kris, Vincent, Pete and I -- all knew that the potential for something even crazier to go down this time around was definitely there: For whatever reason -- like, say, a war in the last decade or something -- people from Split and people from Belgrade don't really see eye to eye on a lot of things.

When we arrived a little late for the official 16:30 tip-off, we all worried that we might be missing all the action. That is, of course, until we walked into a near-empty house.

"Is this even Red Star?" one of my new Three Black Catz friends asked out loud. There didn't appear to be any red in our midst.

"It might explain why our tickets are blue and say 'OKK' on them."

"Yeah, but look, they also have the years 2002-2003 printed on them."

"And the Internet said, 16:30, Split-Red Star."

"Yeah, and like six people have told us that this is Red Star's arena."

Everything was just a big heap of confusion. It was classic Balkans.

"I love this place," I said. Just classic.

It was only after a few minutes -- and after a glance at the scoreboard -- that we registered what we were actually watching: A game between Belgrade's OKK and a club from northern Serbia's Vojvodina region, Novi Sad.

It was worse than JV. I've seen more exciting scrimmages at Strake freshmen B team practice.

But wait.

"Red Star starts at 8:30," a security guard interested in why there were four foreigners at a Belgrade basketball game told us. "There are two games. After this one, everyone must leave, and buy a new ticket if they want to get back in." That was no problem, seeing as we had paid about $2 to enter the first one.

I looked around the circle.

"You guys trying to do a double header?"

"I don't know, the German girl is waiting for us back at the hostel, she may be mad." (Vincent still calls Alida "the German girl," since he somehow never picked up on her name, despite going out with her all night after getting back from the double header, and then laying on top of her in bed and tickling her for about an hour once we got back from going out).

"Yeah, but I definitely want to see a game between Split and Red Star," someone else said. "You know it would be crazy."

A dramatic pause.

"Let's go get some beer."

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A blood feud between rabid Croatian nationalists and equally-rabid Greater Serbians was what I had envisioned going down when I first found out what game was scheduled for last Saturday. And I'm not gonna lie -- I was kind of excited for the cultural experience.

"Oh, you like that? That kind of stuff gets you off?" Dragana had mocked.

"Yes, Dragana. It does."

My response, of course, was conditional upon not having to be included in the blood feud.

I'm not a fighting man, after all. And being raised Catholic, but going to a game in an Orthodox country, the prospect of having to pick sides in a riot between Splitchani (Rome) and Belgraders (Byzantium) was not appealing.

Well, you will never guess what happened.


Absolutely nothing.

Even the Serbians who love their country so much that they feel compelled to bring a Serbian flag to a pro basketball game couldn't get amped for a showdown with a team from Croatia.

In fact, is that man sleeping?


"oooooOOOOOOhhhh!! .... ooooOOOohh!.......... ooOOh .... ... .. oOh, man what happened to all the people?"


The answer is that Red Star-Split fizzled, to say the least.

"If the Croatian fans come," the security guard had warned before we dipped out for those beers, "then there will be big trouble.

"But if they don't..." He shrugged his shoulders. "If they don't come, then it will be only Red Star fans, and there will be no trouble."

The Croatians did not come. During that second game -- unlike how it looked the first time -- only red was in our midst.

"What was all that talk of 'sold out,' then?" Kris asked, seeing that this game wasn't much livelier than the first. We had bargained our way down from 1,200 dinars for four seats to a whopping 1,000 for the lot -- or about four dollars a ticket -- from a scalper outside the door. No ticket windows had been open, after all, and everyone we asked had said the same thing about "billets": "Nema, nema!"

A ticket for a game in December 2006 having the numbers "2002-2003" printed on it; a menu that lists prices for pljeskavica -- essentially Serbian hamburgers -- in asCENDING-descending order (small, large, medium); a flier for a Liberal Party rally telling people to come on Monday, December 12, 2006 (a day that never existed):

These are all things I love about the Balkans.

And then, having to scalp tickets to a game that is not just not sold out, but is actually less than 40 percent filled to capacity.

Absolutely classic.

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Split didn't just lose; Split got embarrassed. It was never even close. Skinn was the only highlight for me, and even he didn't really show me anything. It was just cool to be watching him play for a team so far removed from the glamour of last year's March Madness.

There was one thing, though, that came as a pleasant surprise:

Yet another Balkan moment.

"Oh my God," Vincent said. He fumbled to get his camera out of the case. "Have you seen which fingers the ref's hold up when someone shoots a three?"

I held up my pinkie, ring finger and middle one, and looked down at how ref's do it back home. "It's not like this?"

"No, dude. They hold up the freaking Serbian three-finger thing."

I wouldn't believe it.

"Are you sure? There's no way all of the referees do that; it's probably just the one guy."

But then I saw a Red Star guard jack a three, and up the nationalist gang signs went, from both ref's. If you have ever seen an Orthodox Christian cross himself, you may have noticed that he uses only three fingers -- the thumb, pointer and middle ones, touched together -- every time. It is the only explanation for the origin of this Greater Serbian hand symbol: The sort of gun-plus-the bird combination that is known by all in the Balkans as a sure sign that you are a Serbian nationalist.

And it wasn't just on that shot. From both ref's, they continued to be hoisted into the air, over and over and over again.

Vincent never got a clear photo. He still complains about it, four days later.

"Do you think that was intentional?" I asked one of my best Serbian friends, Zoka, when I saw her again for the first time since coming back. "Do you think those ref's did that just because they knew a team from Croatia was in town -- kind of some subtle signs to let 'em know they're not wanted?" Of course I didn't think this was true -- my questions were all tongue-in-cheek -- but I mean, what if??

Zoka -- who has taught me more about life in Serbia than anyone else, and who serves as my No. 1 sounding board for any questions or observations I have about this country -- just shook her head.

"This is Serbia," she said. "You never know."

We both started to crack up.

"Really," she said, "you never know."

Classic Balkans.