On July 3, 2012, the Brooklyn Nets signed Mirza Teletovic, a 27 year old power forward born and raised in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina. With a listed height of 6'9" and three-point range, Mirza is considered one of the top players to emerge from the Iberian Peninsula and is rumored to have caught the eye of Mikhail Prokhorov while the reclusive team owner hunted bears with Russian president Vladamir Putin in the wilds of Siberia. According to a now-missing source, Prokhorov was enthralled with Mirza's dominating performances in the Euroleague and immediately requested the player's presence for his revamped Nets roster.
"He cannot refuse," Prokhorov purportedly noted, unloading a shotgun into the face of of a nearby brown bear and suspected CIA agent. "I actually mean that for real."
One of the few Bosnians to make a professional sports league in the United States, Mirza is now something of a folk hero to the people back home. In their minds, he represents Bosnia's gradual ascendance to relevance on the world stage and is a symbol of what can be achieved as a nation- including, potentially, admission to the European Union. As a result, Mirza is in top demand - the highways of the Adriatic coast are peppered with Mirza's face, proudly endorsing local-grown pork and the other carbohydrate-based crops used to make Bosnia's world-renowned vodka (the country's principal source of revenue).
Sava Bukvic, a 53 year old itinerant farmer from the impoverished south, has been a fan since he first spotted a 7-year old Mirza developing his dribbling skills on a bombed-out bridge. Speaking from the back of his chamois, a local pack animal and staple protein source, he remains enthusiastic:
"The boy, he has strength of wild pig and balance of chamois on mountainside. He will show the world the spirit of Bosnia."
Bukvic also confirmed the quality of Mirza's bone structure and the soundness of the player's calves, observing that "they can support many structures of emergency nature."
In Mirza's NBA debut on November 5, 2012, he scored 5 points against the Minnesota Timberwolves and the absent Kevin Love. The next game, against the defending champion Miami Heat, he followed up with 3 points on 8 shots. With the Nets' recent acquisition of Celtics legends Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce - thereby forming an opening-day starting lineup described by some as the greatest in Nets history - Mirza now has the opportunity to contribute his skills to a potential championship contender. Expect big things from Mirza and the Nets in 2014.
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