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Lakers’ Sasha Vujacic says his ‘lost trust in my team’s staff’ led to dismissal from Slovenian National team

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Lakers backup guard Sasha Vujacic said in a post on his website that the Slovenian national team didn’t provide adequate medical treatment for a left knee injury that ultimately resulted in Coach Jure Zdovc’s asking him to leave the team.

‘He told me that my leg was not OK and that I was behind [with] the team,’ Vujacic wrote. ‘He also told me I didn’t have a ‘bond’ with the team since I had spent time away from them for my treatment, and that he doesn’t want me on the team.’

Vujacic’s account details step-by-step what he says began as his ‘strong desire to play for my country’ and ended with his feeling ‘sad and angry.’

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Among the highlights:

*Vujacic said playing for his national team took a ‘a long time of consideration,’ but he eventually accepted the invitation because he ‘was assured that things had changed with respect to how the team was handled and operated.’ On his first day of practice, Vujacic said he ‘realized that training was [unreasonably] excessive and insensible to avoid injury.’ He said he felt pain in both knees by the second practice, but that the team’s doctor and therapist ruled that it was nothing serious.

*Vujacic went to China this summer and stage basketball clinics and also promoted his shoe deal for the Chinese brand PEAK. He said he was told not to worry about any physical therapy. The pain felt so sharp, Vujacic said, that he requested an MRI exam when he returned to Slovenia, but he still wasn’t prescribed any therapy. The next day at practice, the pain still existed in his left knee.

‘At this point, I told my coaches that I could not practice any longer unless they came up with some adequate solution and treatment,’ Vujacic wrote. ‘The coaches and medical staff did not come up with any proposed treatment.’

*After four more days of continuing pain, Vujacic said, he then sought medical help outside of the team. The therapist suggested to the team’s medical staff that he sit out five to seven days. The medical staff then said it thought Vujacic arrived with a previous injury, but Vujacic said it happened only when he began practicing with the national team.

‘I lost trust in my team’s staff,’ Vujacic wrote. ‘They massaged my knee with olive oil and that was supposed to help me!?’

*The following day after taking a painkiller, Vujacic said the pain still existed. ‘I told my coach that I would not continue to practice under these circumstances and that he needed to allow me to get appropriate treatment at my own expense,’ Vujacic wrote.

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*He took treatment for five days and then rejoined the team, with Zdovc, Iztok Rems, the federation’s president, and Vujacic agreeing he wouldn’t play during exhibition games while he trained on his own.

* On Aug. 24, Zdovc met with Vujacic to tell him he no longer wanted him on the team. ‘This was extremely difficult news for me to hear,’ Vujacic wrote. ‘There is a code of conduct in basketball and the NBA that states players should not lose their position due to an injury that is not within their control.’

‘All I wanted was honest and [fair] treatment, but what I encountered was politics and hidden agendas.’

*Vujacic wants to move on. He wrote, ‘Now it is time to get back to work in L.A. to help the Lakers win another NBA Championship Ring in 2010!!!!’

--Mark Medina

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