Once Brothers is a 2010 sports documentary film written and directed by Michael Tolajian. It was co-produced by ESPN and NBA Entertainment for ESPN's 30 for 30 series.
The film chronicles the relationship of two basketball players from SFR Yugoslavia—Vlade Divac (Serbia) and Dražen Petrović (Croatia). The duo played together on the Yugoslavia national basketball team from 1986 to 1990 and were at one time close friends, but the Yugoslav Wars drove them apart emotionally, as they came from opposing sides. Petrović died in an automobile accident in 1993 before the two could reconcile; much of film focuses on Divac's regret that they were never able to resolve their differences.
Participants in the film include: Toni Kukoč, Dino Rađa, Žarko Paspalj, Clyde Drexler, Danny Ainge, Rick Adelman, Kenny Anderson, Derrick Coleman, Bill Fitch, Larry Bird, Jan Hubbard, Magic Johnson, Jerry West, Aleksandar Petrović, Biserka Petrović, etc.
Release
The film's first public showing took place on 10 October 2010 at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Two days later on 12 October it had its television premiere on ESPN.
Following a theater run in the country, the film aired on Radio Television of Serbia's channel one in prime time on Thursday, 26 May 2011.
Reaction and critical reception
United States
Dan Devine of the Ball Don't Lie sports blog feels Once Brothers "is exactly the kind of presentation 30 for 30 was meant to produce—an enthralling recounting of a forgotten or underappreciated story about how sports and capital-letters Real Life interact" and sees its biggest asset, among many of them, to be "the honesty of Divac, Kukoč, and Rađa in discussing the emotional toll that the war took on them".
Michael Tully of hammertonail.com sees the film as "being about many different things at once—a history lesson, a touching interpersonal drama, and a positive reaffirmation that the American Dream still exists and isn't a completely silly construct" and labels it "a very strong work, in which the grand scope of the Yugoslav Wars of the early 1990s is personalized through the relationship—and unfortunate falling out—between former NBA stars Vlade Divac and Dražen Petrović".
Though mentioning the movie was "probably too long", objecting in particular to some of the childhood material about Vlade and Dražen as well as to lesser extent to some of Vlade's travelogue before he gets to Croatia being included in the film, Alan Sepinwall of HitFix still thinks it "did a nice job of telling the sad story of how politics tore apart that great Yugoslavian team, and the friendship between Divac and Petrovic".
Writing for the Slant Magazine blog, Jason Bellamy summarizes Once Brothers as an intimate tale that paints a vast panorama, but sees its long intro as necessary because "a good number of average [American] sports fans might not even remember Divac and Petrovic, and even many legitimate NBA fans are unlikely to know much about that duo's European careers, not to mention the outline of the war in the former Yugoslavia". He concludes by opining that "though not the absolute best film in the 30 for 30 series, Once Brothers might be the film that best encapsulates the kind of personal, outside-the-mainstream storytelling that characterizes the series as a whole".
David Cassilo on the SLAM Magazine blog described the film as mainly being Divac's story about dealing with the division that comes between him (a Serb) and all of the Croats that were once his teammates on the Yugoslavian national team, praising it as a must-see for any NBA fan because "within the main story is the story of how an international player adjusts to the NBA. Divac and his former Yugoslavian teammates express all of the obstacles that are in the way for a foreign-born player, including style of play, language and the lack of belief by others that they could actually cut it in the NBA".