Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent, ended up signing an offer sheet from Atlanta that Sacramento did not match.
But his return coincided with the Hawks’ decision to elevate Nate McMillan to interim head coach from his assistant role and the team resuscitating its season by winning eight straight games.
Bogdanovic, 28, recently spoke to The New York Times about his exit from the Kings, his bond with his teammate Trae Young and how he became a fan of Kobe Bryant.
Before everything started, before free agency, before everything, I had the conversation with the Kings and I wanted to stay, because I liked the culture and stuff and I was good with teammates.
I didn’t talk with anyone during the summer and I talked only with my guys from the Kings and my teammates.
Even if I think like, “OK, that play, it doesn’t have to be a scoring play”— there is a lot of things on the court that you can influence the game to win the game.
And I feel like that’s something that the regular people, they cannot see, the fans cannot see.
When you’re losing, you see that very often in the league, everyone is become more selfish and they don’t care about others.
He wants to work, first of all, and he knows in his life, everything he got wasn’t easy.
I feel like the culture here is fans follow the players, the superstars and individuals.
I couldn’t catch the whole series because the TV rights and all that, but whenever the game was on the TV, we would watch.
So, since then I started following that guy and I liked his passion.
award is something that I can compare with the gold medal that our Serbian team won with the national team back then when we had our idols like Peja Stojakovic, Vlade Divac, Sasha Djordjevic.
So, I feel like he can be for sure, one of the kids’ idols there and he can be the next generation motivator for the kids in Serbia.