Name and Surname: Hunor Harkai
Height: 189cm
Weight: 82kg
Born: 6.4.1984
Country: Serbia
Sport: Basketball
Previous Teams (player):
1994-2000 AIK Backa Topola (SERBIA)
2000-2001 NATURTEX SZEDEAK Szeged (HUNGARY)
2001-2002 MAFC Ujbuda Budapest (HUNGARY)
2002-2003 BUDAFOK Budapest (HUNGARY)
2003-2004 MAFC Vegyesz Budapest (HUNGARY)
Previous Teams (coach):
2004-2013 TOPOLCANKA Backa Topola (SERBIA)
2013-2014 PHOENIX SPORTS CLUB Zebbug (MALTA)
2014-2015 FERENCVAROS Budapest (HUNGARY)
2015-2016 IF AABYHOJ Aabyhoj (DENMARK)
2016-2017 PORTLOAISE PANTHERS Portlaoise (IRELAND)
2017 Aug-2018 Jan ABN ACADEMY Bangalore (INDIA)
2018 Jan-2019 Jul JP-Auto JKSE Jaszbereny (HUNGARY)
2019 Aug-2020 Jan KKS Budapest (HUNGARY)
2020 Jan-2020 Jun BKV’81 Vejen (DENMARK)
Awards (biggest):
2020: 3rd place with BKV ’81 Vejen Basketball Klub (men senior team) in the Danish Division 1
2019: Coach of the year in the Region Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok in Hungary (JP-Auto JKSE)
2019: 1st place with JP-Auto JKSE (young senior men team) in the Regional Championship
2019: 2nd place with JP-Auto JKSE (men U18 team) in the National B Final
2017: 5th place with Portlaoise Panthers in the Irish Super League (women senior team)
2017: 2nd place of Midland League with Portlaoise Panthers (men senior team)
2017: 2nd place of Midland Cup with Portlaoise Panthers (men senior team)
2014: Winner of BOV Cup with Phoenix Sports Club (men senior team)
2014: 3rd place with Phoenix Sports Club (men senior team)
2004-13: with Topolcanka several times champion with youth women teams (U18, U16, U14) and promotion with the senior women team to the National League
Lecturer on international coaching seminars in Serbia and India
Head Coach/Technical Director like guest in many basketball camps: Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Malta, Greece, Germany, Denmark, India etc.
How did you get into sport? Who or what got you into sport:
In the 90s it was usually in Serbia that children try a lot of sports and after choosing the one. It is important where your friends are going and then you follow them, that is why I started to go with my friends first for karate and then for table tennis training. With my father I watched a lot of basketball matches at home. He was a fan of Jugoplastika from Croatia, so I remembered a few big matches from the European Champions Cup (former Euroleague competition), which they won 3 times in a row. After I saw some key matches which made me a passionate athlete and pushed me to be a real basketball lover. First match of that kind was on 16th April 1992, the final of the European Champions Cup between Serbian Partizan Belgrade and Spanish Joventut. Today still I am feeling fire in my heart when I remember for the last attack of the match how Aleksandar Djordjevic scored a three-pointer from an almost impossible situation less than 8 seconds after he brought up the ball. After that I became a big fan of Partizan Belgrade and I followed all the matches of the national team Yugoslavia, Serbia&Montenegro, Serbia. In the primary school I got a great PE teacher, Stevan Ilibasic, who was not just holding PE classes, he pushed all of us to go for football, basketball training in local clubs, even he said for us who is the coach and when are the trainings. That is how I entered in basketball, and I am very thankful because not just showed me a way in his PE classes. I loved more sports globally and how I played and coached in many countries I never met with a PE teacher in no one country who organized so many things for the children and shared his passion. I wrote in more detail how I started/played basketball and worked like a coach in my biography book: Basketball Mission of Hunor Harkai (2019).
Which coaches had biggest impact on your coaching career:
The biggest impact for me had Dusan Ivkovic with his work at the national team and clubs. After helping me 3 coaches who were leading their teams for several years, made a system and they always tried to keep the main players and who is coming in the team must be a good person and have willingness to be part of a team and to play without ego. The coaches were Zelimir Obradovic (Panathinaikos), Dusan Vujosevic (PARTIZAN NIS Belgrade) and from women basketball Laszlo Ratgeber (PVSK Pecs). I am trying in my free time always to learn something new and develop, that is why I am still following Zelimir Obradovic, and waiting to finish his break and again to see him on the bench of an Euroleague team. How I worked in a lot of countries I used for it. I need to be flexible and to be smart minded, keep my players strength and knowledge and just to add something new to what I know, so I am not playing with my teams just what I learned and bringing with me from Serbia. I am following a lot of spanish and lithunian style of basketball and somehow I am trying to give my teams a mix of knowledge and what we are playing that is always depending what kind of players I have and not what are my favourite plays or my philosophy. Mostly I am following Euroleague, Eurocup, Adriatic League, some European better leagues, just sometimes I am watching NBA.
Would you refer an agent to sportsmen, which wants to go abroad or to a better team in their league:
Today agents are an important part for a players and coach’s career. I have good experience with agents, but I would not say names who I would refer to but some of players who I knew personally I connected with some agents who are taking care about the athlete too not just to get the percentage after the signing of the contract.
If you had an opportunity to start all over again, would you choose the same sport as you are doing right now, If so, why.
I am happy and delighted that I am in basketball and I never think that it would be better for me to be in another sport. But if I would have had more impact from another sport when I was a child maybe I would be in a different sport. In the 90’s national basketball players were not just athletes in the former Yugoslavia, they were heroes for us, especially in the time of the war, matches against the United States of America in the final of the Olympic Games in Atlanta (1996) and Quarterfinal of the World Championship in Indianapolis (2002) were not just a basketball match. Lot of serbian players/coaches are doing his job with passion, we are used for it that we are always representing with every our step our club, community but our country too when we are working abroad, and we knew that we are from Serbia, we learned and became athletes there and we want to give back what we get from our country.
What was the best you can remember from the time you were a coach. Can you name one bad and one good experience.
I spent 9 years in the serbian club Topolcanka, which has great tradition, in the former Yugoslavia played the highest league too. Here I enjoyed that we create a system, we made schools of basketball in the former towns too not just in Backa Topola, so we were creating teams from lot of kids, and after few years in our senior team sometimes we had just our homegrown players, we had just sometimes 1 or 2 players who were not our homegrown players. It was my first club in my coaching career, I am always feeling that Topolcanka is in my heart and I am a big fan of the club. I am following their results, sometimes the matches too in Backa Topola if I am not abroad at that time. I am always thankful for all clubs and it is a pleasure for me that I worked there and I was part of the club’s history, that is why I would not say a club name that I had a bad experience. That I can say that in one club I got a senior team which selected the club, and in the team I had 4 centers who were almost the same quality just some of them played better in defense when we played man on man, zone defense, zone press or in offense they had some other strengths. So this situation was complicated, all 4 wanted to play a lot, so you need to be a politician that they need to be happy, until the other teams can focus just on the result or building their teams play match by match.
Is there anything else you would like to achieve in your sport.
In 3 clubs with the team we achieved the biggest result in the club, what is for me always the biggest achievement in one club, when you are managing to make the club’s best result in history. This was my first goal when I started to be a coach, my next goal would be for me to have an opportunity to train a team which is competing in an European cup competition too beside their National League, and my last goal I think everybody can imagine after this article.
What would be your advice for young sportsmen, so they could become famous as you are.
You must decide that you want to do everything to be successful, but you need to put on the first place school because nobody can guarantee that you will be a pro player, even if you are a great player anytime can cause a big injury with you which can change the length of your career. Second place needs to be your sport and everything just after. You need to realize that your team training is not enough, you must work on yourself individually. Maybe you have 1 or 2 team trainings in a day but you need to work a few hours individually on yourself more, strength, technique, etc. Find your goals, and you need to go step by step, not to push the next goal so high that you can’t achieve in the current time, but your final goal can be very high, which is pushing you day by day to achieve. If you do not have goals, you can burn out and you will look at basketball just like this is a job and you get your salary. You can stay long in basketball just if you are feeling passion and you are fully motivated and almost the whole day in your head you are trying to find ideas how you can help your player on the court and off the court. I am 26 years in basketball, and I am still so hungry for success when I played my first real basketball match and I wanted to score a basket. You need to be clear in your head that one club believes in you, that is why you are there, and you are there to give your best and fight for the club and community who believe in you and give you an opportunity. You need to respect all the people in the club and the fans who want development and progress of the club.
When, where and how should they start.
I can say now an ideal formula, but not all the youth players have the same conditions for their development. This does not mean they do not have a chance to be successful, but they need to work harder and more to respect every opportunity. The best basic sports before you are starting to play basketball is swimming and combat sports. Children can go swimming from tha age 3-4, for combat sport little later. At age 8-9 is enough to start basketball. In the first years it is very important to choose a club where there is a good coach who is able to teach the right technique and has willingness to correct often the technical elements. 6-7 years is a lot of time and is enough to learn technical elements on a right level and some tactic elements, the next step would be to increase strength and tactic knowledge but still must have willingness to learn complicated technique elements too or previous technique elements to increase on a higher level. Need to start to go for individual training alone to work on yourself not just on individual training in the club if your coach is organizing for you beside the team training. Most important to work on your shooting, from place, after stop, after dribble, after changing your hands from different situations and with some different shooting technique and style. Science is saying one player needs to shoot with good technique at least 10.000 times in his career, on a team training maybe you are shooting 50-100 times from a distance, from this just can count which shots are with good technique done. During the youth categories you need to play your own age group when you are a leader and to play with one age group up where you are just in the rotation. In your age group you are learning how to play a leader role that you need to receive the ball more. With one age group up you are learning and focusing more to play without the ball. Lot of senior players problem that they not has a knowledge playing without the ball, can’t be everybody main player in every team, even a great pro player will be not always the main player which is feeded with ball during the whole match. You should need to be in a club which has the opportunity to put you in a senior team when you are 16-17 years old, this can be the club’s first senior team or the second senior team which is competing in a lower senior league. Big step from the youth category to play senior league, a young player needs to get an opportunity to learn in the senior league without pressure and can make his mistakes and learn from it. Some countries are saying a young player is 22-23, at 22-23 the player needs to be ready, in the Balkan kids with 16-18 are playing senior leagues. Even at a very high level you can see that almost all kids are leading big teams, everybody can remember Bogdan Bogdanovic at what age he played in Partizan Belgrade when they competed in the Euroleague, or how old was Luka Doncic when he played in Real Madrid. From the age 16-18 you need to think how you can continue basketball, if you want to be a pro player you need 2 team trainings in a day and individual training more. If you are enthusiastic you can make it beside the university but beside a full time job it is impossible to have so much training. Very important that a club gives you conditions that you can focus just on basketball and in that time you have a coach who has good experience like a coach from senior basketball. You need to accept a lower wage too if your accommodation and meals are fixed and you have an opportunity for a good number of training and you get a chance to play a main role. For a young player it is important to play and learn, it can be a good combination too that you are playing just in the rotation in the first senior team but in the second senior team you are a leader. For a young player the worst can be if you get good conditions but you are not playing, money is not everything, you need to have long-term plans and you need to think for your development and your next steps in your career. If you are a good player and slowly you are famous and you have good experience from good leagues you will find easier clubs, but everybody needs to realize that today agents are an important part of basketball, and important to build good cooperation with sport agents.
Are there any special abilities which players need in your sport?
For me character and bravery make a big difference between players and coaches in basketball. Beside these two special abilities must be the person hard worker, enthusiastic, team player, flexible and have the willingness to always learn something new.
What would you refer to players so they could be successful?
Be brave to achieve your dreams, but you need to subordinate everything to basketball! You can’t compete with people who are almost whole day thinking and working in basketball if you are not.
Are you a fan of other sports, do you watch other sports in your free time.
When I was a child I spent my pocket money on daily sport newspapers and on weekly and monthly sport magazines, so I am following many sports from my childhood. I mostly watch football, volleyball, handball, waterpolo. In the 90’s I grow up on masterful moves of Predrag Mijatovic, Dejan Savicevic, Dragan Stojkovic, Vladimir Jugovic, Sinisa Mihajlovic (football), Nikola&Vladimir Grbic, Goran Vujevic, Andrija Geric (volleyball), Dragan Skrbic, Nenad Perunicic, Arpad Sterbik (handball), Dejan Savic, Aleksandar Sapic, Vladimir Vujasinovic (waterpolo).
