Arijan Komazec

Club career

Komazec started his professional career as a basketball player at the age of 16, in the historical club of Zadar, in the 1986–87 season. At the end of the previous season, Zadar had become champions of the Yugoslav League, and had the right to participate in the FIBA European Champions Cup (EuroLeague). Komazec made great performances, and led his team in the fourth place of the top 6 semifinal group stage. After six years in Zadar, where he became the absolute leader and scorer of his team, he made the big step in his career for the transcription of the Greek League (which was then the best in Europe) and Panathinaikos, of the head coach Željko Pavličević and the Greek superstar Nikos Galis. There he found an old acquaintance from years of Zadar, Stojko Vranković, who had just returned from the NBA.

In a year that began with ambitions to win the championship, for Panathinaikos and him also, won only the 1993 Greek Cup, in a final against Sato Aris. Komazec, although he did some excellent performances, did not respond satisfactorily to Panathinaikos, who was preparing to make the fling at European level, and in the summer he was loaned to Cagiva Varese, where he played the next two seasons (1993–94 in A2 & 1994–95 A1), and made impressive performances.

The impression that he made by his performance in Varese, caused Buckler Bologna, which was the dominant team of the Italian League the previous years, to buy his contract from Panathinaikos, and close a deal with him for the next two years, in an effort to replace the large void left in the team by Saša Danilović leaving for the NBA's Miami Heat.

The Croatian star didn't succeed one more time to respond to the high demands of competitive sport at the top level, and he only led Virtus to the meager wins of the Italian Supercup in 1996, and the Italian Cup in 1997. This failure brought him back again to Varese the next year (1997–98), where rediscovered his best self, and with a scoring recital, he led the Lombardy team to the playoffs semifinals in the Italian League, and on the course to a participation in the EuroLeague, for the first time 20 years.

In the summer of 1998, came the third and final chance for Komazec to make an important achievement in a great club of European basketball, as he agreed to play for Olympiacos of head coach Dušan Ivković. Arijan began the season doing very well, and everything indicated that the experiment for the player and the club could end up in achieving something good at the end of the season, when the major club titles, both in Greece and in Europe were contested. But an injury put him off of the court for half a month, and he became substantially off in his playing form, throughout the remaining part of the season.

His participation at the 1999 FIBA EuroLeague Final Four, in Munich, was the only one in his short and essentially failed time at Olympiacos. In the next season (1999–00), he returned to his roots, and he quite unexpectedly was joined in Zadar by Dino Rađa. Together, the duo led the Dalmatian club to the semifinals of the FIBA Saporta Cup, where they lost to the Greek club AEK. Τhey won of the Croatian Cup in the same season, which marked the last success of his career.

He was briefly a part of the Vancouver Grizzlies NBA team, during the 2000-01 season, but he only spent one month with the team, and he did not played in any official NBA games with them.

National team

Komazec was a member of the senior Yugoslavian national team (1990–92), and then the senior Croatian national team. He was a part of the Croatian teams that won silver at the 1992 Summer Olympics, and bronze at EuroBasket 1993 and 1995.