Igor Rakocevic has not only been a Basketball player his entire life who has enjoyed an illustrious career in the Euroleague along with a short stint as an NBA player for the Minnesota Timberwolves, but he’s also an avid practitioner of BJJ and has just been promoted to black belt in the art. Rakocevic is Serbian and he has been training in BJJ for a little over nine years with Zerjal team in Belgrade, the same team that he has just received his final belt promotion under.
Rakocevic played at both the point guard and shooting guard positions throughout his career, and along with his season playing for the Minnesota Timberwolves he has also played for Valencia, Real Madrid, and TAU Ceramica among others. He was a two-time all-Euroleague member and was called up to the FR Yugoslavian national team for several years before it was renamed the Serbian and Montenegrin national team. Representing his country, Rakocevic was able to win gold medals at both the 2001 FIBA EuroBasket and the 2002 FIBA World Championship.
Although Igor Rakocevic has been retired since 2013, he has stayed active by taking up BJJ and training consistently. Given the remarkable height that’s required in order to be competitive as a basketball player, Rakocevic has several natural athletic gifts that work in his favor when training in Jiu-Jitsu. He isn’t the only NBA player to take up the sport either as Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert was recently seen training in BJJ as well, although he’s a great many years away from earning a black belt like Igor Rakocevic has.
Igor Rakocevic announced the news of his promoted to black belt in BJJ in a post to his official Instagram account:
