TB EXCLUSIVE | Nikola Kalinić: Before Obradović, I was treating basketball as a hobby. It’s a job now.”

How do you spend your leisure time? We know you’re a Doctor Who fan. Are there any other TV shows or other activities you love? 

I’m a great Doctor Who fan. 

Season 11 isn’t so good, though… 

It’s interesting. To be honest, I was trying to be too politically correct but OK. But I like it anyway. It’s about Doctor Who, about adventures, new things, new ideas. I think there are few amazing seasons where I was left speechless. Except that, I like to watch some movies, read books, drink coffee, go around especially when there is nicer weather. If the weather is bad, I’m also a little bit down. If the weather is nice, I’m happier and in the mood. 

So, you’re nice today. 

Yes, I am great. (Laughing) I got my coffee and the sun. I feel really good. Except that, I was trying to play harmonica. I wasn’t so good. I like to play chess. I want to start going to some classes to improve my chess abilities. I listen to a lot of music. Those are some of the things I do. I also spend a lot of time on social media, to be honest. It’s a thing which I’m not happy with, but I’m trying to improve myself. 

I was just going to ask you a question about social media. We observe that you like spending time on social media, as you just said it. In fact, as appeared on your blog on euroleague.net, this is what you have to say about social media: “Can you imagine what Nikola Tesla or Albert Einstein would have done with all that easily-accessible knowledge? Instead, we use it to watch funny videos and take selfies.” What are your thoughts about the way it’s used? 

I don’t think social media is necessarily a bad thing. It depends on how you use it. If you use it to improve your knowledge, to find out interesting things about the world, yourself, philosophy, art, music, then it’s a great place. If you are spending your time cats falling from the chairs and stuff like that, I think you are wasting your time on Earth. But OK, everybody has their opinion. I’m trying to decrease my time on social media and I’m succeeding slowly, step by step.

While I was doing my research, I came across some mentions on Twitter from Serbian fans saying you kinda neglect your country. How do you feel when a countryman says such thing? 

There are always gonna be comments like this. There are some fellow countrymen of mine who are living in the past. They’re still living in the time of Ottoman Empire and they remember what Ottoman Empire did in Serbia and Balkans. I tried to explain it in that interview [on Blic], which everybody misunderstood – or they just understood what they want to understand. I think we all should start working together. I don’t care what happened 10-20 years ago and I especially don’t care what happened 500-600 years ago; Battle of Kosovo or whatever… I really don’t know who’s a good person. If he’s good, I’m gonna be good to him; if he’s bad, I’m just gonna ignore him. And I’m really trying to send that message to everybody. Somebody misunderstood and they’re saying I’m here and I’m gonna become a Turk, an Ottoman and whatever. I think it’s nonsense. I like Turkey. I also like Serbia. It’s my country, I grew up there, my family’s there. So, why can’t you choose both countries at the same time? 

Going abroad or living abroad must change your opinion on this subject. If you’d live only in Serbia, your mindset might be the same as theirs. 

When I started traveling around the Europe, not just for basketball, but with my friends, our expectations were like what they taught us in the school or in the newspapers or on TV: Serbians are the best people of the world, it’s only us against the world, everybody hates us because we are the best. Then I go to somewhere in Europe, and ask somebody what they think about Serbia, they don’t know what to say about Serbia. ‘Do you mean Siberia or Russia?’, they say. And I say ‘No, I mean Serbia and Balkans. You must know it; everybody knows Serbia.’ I thought those were isolated cases but it happened a few more times and I realized that maybe what I was watching on TV and what I was reading in the newspapers aren’t all true. Then I started doing research and realized that our country is amazing, OK and we have many good things but we are also over-confident. Like you said, maybe that’s the point. Maybe we need to travel more and share stories. 

Many times, people who don’t understand something are scared of it. I always tell them to go to Turkey and see [how it is]. Don’t talk about Ottoman Empire or whatever. Go to Istanbul. Now there are cheap flights. Go see and talk to people. You’re gonna see nobody doesn’t care about Ottomans or what happened 500 years ago.