Žarko Paspalj (Serbian Cyrillic: Жарко Паспаљ; born March 27, 1966) is a retired Serbian professional basketball player and sports administrator. The EuroLeague Final Four MVP in 1994, his sixteen and a half seasons career was mostly spent in Yugoslavia and Greece, along with several short stints in the NBA, France, and Italy. Since 2009, he has been vice-president of the Serbian Olympic Committee. Paspalj was a FIBA European Selection in 1991. For years, Paspalj was an automatic choice for Yugoslavia's senior national team, representing his country in one FIBA World Cup, two Olympics, and four EuroBaskets. He earned an All-EuroBasket Team selection in 1989. He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame in 2022. Early life Paspalj's forester father Jovan's lumber trade job took him from his home village on the slopes of Kozara in Bosanska Krajina to Pljevlja, finding employment at the Lumber Processing Plant (ŠIK Velimir Jakić). Once there he married a local woman, Mileva, and remained. Their first child, son Darko, was born in 1961, five years before Žarko was born in 1966. During the mid-1970s, when young Žarko was ten years old, his father's job requirements moved the family to Titograd. Žarko took up basketball and soon established himself in the youth system of KK Budućnost. He considers himself an ethnic Serb from Montenegro, which he believes is "only natural". Club career Early days in Titograd Paspalj began his career in 1982. At 16 he moved up to Budućnost's first team where he was part of a talented generation alongside Zdravko Radulović and Luka Pavićević. At the time, Budućnost was a small, unambitious side that had played its first ever top-tier season two years earlier in 1980–81, essentially serving as talent feeder for bigger Yugoslav League clubs like Partizan, Cibona, Jugoplastika, Crvena zvezda, and Bosna. Constantly in danger of relegation, Budućnost sometimes banked on more than just its own quality for top-league survival. There is an unconfirmed story that became a bit of local urban legend from the early 1980s when Paspalj was a junior, about Cibona coming to Titograd for a late season game which was meaningless for Zagreb side but crucial for Budućnost's hopes of remaining in the top division. The story goes that a deal was struck between two sides to allow the home team to win, while in return Cibona management got to watch Budućnost's juniors practice and take