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Igor Stefan Kokoskov enters his third season as an assistant coach with the Pistons after spending three seasons on the Los Angeles Clippers’ bench as an assistant coach (2000-03). Last summer, Kokoskov returned to his native Serbia and Montenegro to serve as a coach for the Serbia and Montenegro national team at the 2005 European Championships.
A native of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Kokoskov is the first full-time, non-American assistant coach in NBA history. Before joining the Clippers, he spent the 1999-2000 season as an assistant coach at the University of Missouri with Pistons vice president of basketball operations John Hammond. Upon joining the Missouri staff in the summer of 1999, Kokoskov became the first European coach to hold a full-time position with an NCAA Division I-A school.
Prior to Kokoskov’s move to the United States, he instructed Yugoslavia’s top amateur and professional players for eight years, including a stint as the assistant coach of Yugoslavia’s Junior National Team. In 1995, he took over the head coaching duties of BC Belgrade at the age of 24, making him the youngest head coach in the history of Yugoslavian basketball. Kokoskov returned to his native Serbia and Montenegro to serve as an Olympic coach for the Serbia and Montenegro national team at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
Over the past three summers, Kokoskov has served as an instructor at Basketball Without Borders and he also serves as an instructor at several other international coaching clinics in Africa and Europe. | 