1998 Paspalj secured a move to the newly crowned European champions, Kinder Bologna, allegedly as a favour to Predrag Danilović, Paspalj's great friend and a star on the team. However, effects of past injuries and years of chain-smoking caught up with him and he was cut from the team in December on medical advice from his doctor and after a series of undistinguished performances and an average of 8.2 points per game and 4 rebounds per game in domestic play. Paspalj's best performance came when he scored 18 points (2/3, 8/11) against Rimini in October, while his last game in professional basketball came on December 20, 1998, when he scored 7 points (1/1, 3/4) in 13 minutes' play against Verona. During this period he had one final appearance in front of his old Olympiacos fans, in a EuroLeague game in October 1998, scoring 2 points (0/2 1/5), but by this time Paspalj was a shadow of his former self and struggled to keep up with the pace of games. Paspalj initially harbored hopes of returning to basketball, and gave an interview to Greek television in July 1999 in which he stated his intent to play again and the possibility that he might obtain Greek citizenship to ease the process, as teams were restricted to the number of non-EU players they could sign. Neither panned out, and the tragedy for basketball was that a player of his caliber was unable to continue to perform at a professional level and was lost to the sport at the age of 32, but for Paspalj himself a personal near-tragedy was still to come. Summing up his 14 and a half seasons in professional basketball, Paspalj is remembered for a successful globetrotting career that included a multitude of trophies and individual awards. Perhaps the single most memorable aspect of his game is the off-balance, unorthodox sling-style shooting technique he perfected — a move that served him so well in the first part of his career, but deserted him later on. An interview with Paspalj in November 2015 for a Greek television station elicited a deluge of messages from viewers who continued to recall Paspalj with tremendous affection two decades later. Paspalj returned to Piraeus and his old Olympiakos home in September 2017 to attend a benefit game in honor of the legendary Yugoslav coach Dusan Ikvovic, and received a rapturous welcome from fans of his