Milan Mačvan

Professional career

Mačvan started turning heads before even starting his senior club career by playing in junior and cadet European and World championships as part of the Serbian national team.

After passing through different youth levels at KK FMP, he began his senior career at the club in fall 2007, ahead of the 2007–08 season under head coach Vlada Vukoičić. He appeared in five Adriatic League games for them before transferring to KK Hemofarm in mid-December 2007.

Mačvan did not have a professional contract during his time at Železnik due to being underage; however when he turned 18 in November 2007, he got the option of signing one and somewhat surprisingly chose to do so with rival KK Hemofarm, which paid Železnik €150,000 for his services. The biggest reason behind his decision to sign with Hemofarm rather than remain with Železnik lay in the fact that Hemofarm's head coach Miroslav Nikolić also coached Mačvan in the Serbian Under-19 team that won the FIBA Under-19 World Championship 2007 that summer. A couple of months later Nikolić resigned his post at Hemofarm after a string of poor results, and the club brought in Vlada Vukoičić, Mačvan's coach at Železnik, who got fired there in the meantime.

At the 2009 Nike Hoop Summit game held on April 11 at Portland's Rose Garden, Mačvan was the game's MVP with 23 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 assists leading the international team to their first win since 1998.

On December 17, 2010, Mačvan signed a five-year contract with EuroLeague contenders Maccabi Tel Aviv. Macvan played at the 2010-11 EuroLeague Final, Scoring 3 points and grabbing 4 rebounds in 12 minutes.

On October 18, 2011, Mačvan signed a one-year loan deal with KK Partizan. Over 10 EuroLeague games, he averaged career-high 15.3 points and 8.2 rebounds per game.

On 30 July 2012, Mačvan signed two-year contract with Turkish team Galatasaray Medical Park who also competed in the EuroLeague. Mačvan's former club Maccabi Tel Aviv got a €250.000 buyout from Galatasaray.

On 17 October 2014, Mačvan signed a contract with his former club KK Partizan until the end of season.

On 15 July 2015, Mačvan signed a two-year contract with the Italian club Emporio Armani Milano. In November 2015, he broke his right hand, and was expected to miss six weeks of action.

Career statistics

Note: The EuroLeague is not the only competition in which the player participated for the team during the season. He also played in domestic competition, and regional competition if applicable.

Youth level

Even before getting first team action on the club level with FMP, Mačvan began playing international competitions for Serbian national youth teams.

In 2007, 17-year-old Mačvan had a busy and successful summer. First in mid July, he led the Serbian under-19 team to victory at the Under-19 World Championship in Novi Sad, earning the MVP honours in the process. In the final, Serbia defeated the United States team featuring Stephen Curry and DeAndre Jordan. Then, only ten days later, Mačvan was included by coach Dejan Mijatović on the Serbian under-18 team, leading it to gold at the Under-18 European Championship in Madrid, with a team best 19.3 points per game and 10.3 rebounds per game over 8 games. For his efforts, at the end of 2007, Mačvan received the Golden Badge Award as the Best Young Athlete of the Year in Serbia given by Sport newspaper.

Next summer, 2008, in early August, 18-year-old Mačvan played for the Serbian under-20 team at the 2008 FIBA Europe Under-20 Championship in Riga, Latvia. Coached by Slobodan Klipa, this time around, Mačvan's stats weren't as dominant as the duo of Miroslav Raduljica and Marko Kešelj took over the leading roles in the beginning stages of the tournament. However, as the matches progressed, Mačvan started regaining top form and made a huge contribution in the final versus Lithuania, leading the team with 31 points. He finished the tournament with 16.9 points per game and 6.6 rebounds per game over 8 games.

Senior level

In late summer 2009, coming off a great club season at Hemofarm as well as helping Serbia win the 2009 Universiade tournament on home soil in early July, Mačvan made the Serbian national team 12-man roster head coach Dušan Ivković took to EuroBasket 2009 in Poland. Being on a young squad whose oldest members were 26-year-olds Bojan Popović and Nenad Krstić, 19-year-old Mačvan was the squad's youngest player. Despite the player's youth and inexperience at the big stage, coach Ivković gave Mačvan decent minutes off the bench at his major tournament debut game versus world champions, Olympic silver medalists, and EuroBasket runners-up Spain that Serbia surprisingly won 66-57 while Mačvan contributed with 8 points and 3 rebounds in 17 minutes of action, hitting two clutch three-pointers in the third quarter, incidentally his only field goals of the contest. The group stage continued with a loss versus Slovenia and this time Mačvan got 18 minutes backing up Novica Veličković at the power forward position as his scoring output dropped off to 4 points. In the second group stage outings — wins against host Poland followed by a loss to Turkey — Mačvan's playing time decreased, before getting a slight bump versus Lithuania in the closing group stage contest while his scoring contribution became almost negligible. At the first single-elimination stage, quarterfinal win versus Russia, the youngster's game saw a slight boost with 5 points, though this was followed by a complete omission in the hard-fought semifinal overtime win versus Slovenia as Ivković preferred the more experienced Veličković. In the final the next day, tired and emotionally spent Serbian team lost big to Spain with young Mačvan getting little opportunity to play.

Mačvan played at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey, and at the EuroBasket 2011 in Lithuania.

In early July 2013, despite receiving a call-up for EuroBasket 2013, Mačvan didn't show up at the Serbian national team training camp. Asked by the Serbian media about the reasons for Mačvan not being there, head coach Ivković said he didn't know them and revealed that the coaching staff's attempts to reach the player in order to see what's going on were unsuccessful. As a result of Mačvan's failure to show up, Ivković decided to make two subsequent call-ups, to 20-year-old Nemanja Krstić and 21-year-old Nikola Kalinić both of whom went on to make the final 12-man roster and make their competitive debuts for the national team.

In early June 2014, the national team's newly appointed head coach Saša Đorđević announced Mačvan alongside 28 other individuals on the preliminary list of players he was considering for the 12 final roster spots at the 2014 FIBA World Cup. On 1 July, announcing the official call-ups for the start of the training camp, Đorđević crossed out 9 names from the preliminary list including Mačvan's, saying the 24-year-old got excluded for tactical reasons while adding he had "an unfocused season [at Galatasaray] without a specific position". Two days later when Novica Veličković, one of the 20 players who received call-ups, announced he wouldn't be showing up to training camp due to knee injury, agitated Đorđević criticized him in the media: "I'm blindsided and disappointed by Veličković's unfair move. We've been in constant contact before the call-up list had been announced and not once did he mention anything about an injury... More than anything else he owes an explanation to Duško Savanović and Milan Mačvan, two players that weren't called-up because I gave Veličković the advantage over them. If you're wondering if I'll now be calling-up either Savanović or Mačvan, I won't be. My face is way too red in front of them over this to do that now".

Personal life

Mačvan was born in Vukovar, into an ethnic Serb family. At three years of age (1992–93) he left war-struck Vukovar for Serbia with his family, living in Novi Sad with his mother for a period. At six years of age he returned briefly to Vukovar, where he started playing basketball for KK Vukovar. The family then moved to Bačka Palanka in northern Serbia.

His family has the slava (saint feast day) of Nikoljdan (St. Nicholas), and he has said that he believes in God and goes to church. He has a younger sister, Jelena (born 1995), who briefly played volleyball.