Turning 30 years old is enough reason to celebrate, but Mirza Teletovic has more cause than most. During the Bosnian war of the 1990s, a young Mirza would hear his parents relay a daily stream of names of those who had perished in the conflict. A relative one day. A neighbor the next.
Teletovic says one night he asked his mother, “Is anybody alive?”
Amid the stark rubble of his homeland, the rapidly growing boy found the passion that gave him life amid the surrounding death. Brief flirtations with soccer, kick boxing and karate had not felt nearly as comfortable nor as stimulating as a basketball in his hands.