Dejan Bodiroga

Wikipedia lists him as an independent. Since December 2024 he has publicly backed the student-led protests that followed the Novi Sad railway station canopy collapse. He was 24th on the Student List – Students Win, which won the most votes in the Serbian parliamentary election of 25 October 2026.

Career

Bodiroga joined Zadar at 17 and went on to play in Italy, for Real Madrid (1996–1998), Panathinaikos (1998–2002), Barcelona (2002–2005) and Lottomatica Roma, retiring in 2007. He won the EuroLeague in 2000, 2002 and 2003, was twice Final Four MVP and was named the EuroLeague's player of the decade 2000–2010. With FR Yugoslavia he won EuroBasket in 1995, 1997 and 2001, the world championship in 1998 (as MVP) and 2002, and Olympic silver in 1996. He was general manager of Virtus Roma (2007–2009) and vice-president of the Basketball Federation of Serbia (2011–2015), and Euroleague Basketball named him president in September 2022. When reports in September 2026 placed him at the head of the Student List, the pro-government daily Večernje novosti stressed that he had never enrolled at university, and President Aleksandar Vučić said he hoped the opposition would keep to its motto that knowledge is power.

Positions

Bodiroga signed the ProGlas civic appeal in November 2023 (N1). After the canopy collapse of November 2024 he joined protests in Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Niš and Belgrade. Speaking at the students' Vidovdan rally in Belgrade on 28 June 2025, he called the students patriots and the best Serbia has, said the academic community had woken Serbia from a deep sleep, and said those who called the young protesters terrorists while protecting the worst criminals should be ashamed (021.rs). In December 2025 he signed the students' petition for early elections.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Studentska lista – Studenti pobeđuju · 021.rs · N1 · Večernje novosti · Večernje novosti

Photo: shaka, CC BY-SA 2.0 it, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)