An 18-year-old Nemanja Bjelica walked into a restaurant in his hometown of Belgrade, Serbia to ring in the new year in 2007.

It had been a difficult time for Bjelica, a soft-spoken but proud young man just beginning his professional basketball career in Austria who had come home to rehab a sprained ankle.

His fortunes turned when he met a pretty, 19-year-old brunette. But as far as first impressions went, Bjelica had some work to do.

“Too tall for me,” she thought. “I’m 5-9. But I never met a guy so tall as he is. He was too tall, really. With long hair.”

So he was goofy looking?

“I was chubby a little bit,” Bjelica said with a sheepish smile. “Goofy is a good word.”

They started to talk and, before the night was over, a connection formed.

“Usually I give a wrong number,” Mirjana said. “But that was the first time I gave the correct number. He called me back after five days.”

Like most teenage boys, Bjelica had to try to play it cool. It didn’t take long for all that bravado and silliness to get swatted away like a Bryn Forbes layup attempt.

“I fell in love with her from Day 1,” Bjelica said.

It wasn’t long before Mirjana gave up her job to go with Bjelica as his budding basketball career started to take off. They lived together in Austria, Serbia, Spain and Turkey before finally arriving in the United States to play for the Timberwolves in 2015.

Nemanja Bjelica and his wife Mirjana, now with two children, have lived in four countries in seven years as he chased his basketball dreams. (Credit: Margo LaPanta)

Now they have lived in Minnesota for three years, as long as they have stayed in any one place together during a whirlwind decade of basketball dream chasing.

They are fiercely loyal to their Serbian homeland and always look forward to trips back to see family and friends. But as Bjelica looks around the spacious apartment he sublets from former teammate Ricky Rubio, listens to 6-year-old daughter Nika chirping and 2-month-old son Stefan fussing and thinks of all his family has endured to support his basketball odyssey, he can’t help but think how it would feel to put some roots down after so many years on the move.

“I am really proud that I come from Serbia. I love my country,” Bjelica said, leaning back on a white couch across from a flat-screen TV and a wall of windows looking into downtown Minneapolis. “We will always want our kids to know where they’re from, where their grandparents live.

“Sometimes, the place where you want to live is where your family is. We want everything to be good for our kids. In this moment I don’t see a reason to leave here.”

Bjelica’s contentment comes from a comfort in his surroundings and a happiness in his hooping that has not always been there. The family’s first days in the U.S. were trying, more due to Bjelica’s struggles to acclimate to a new and more demanding league than it was for any cultural differences.

Now on a resurgent team featuring Jimmy Butler, Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns, Bjelica counts as one of the Timberwolves’ most important players.

“It was hard because when he’s happy in basketball, he’s happy at home, too,” Mirjana said. “And when he’s not happy at home, you cannot speak with him. He is always watching the games, on the phone, following everything.”

Born in the USA

As her parents are discussing their winding road to Minnesota, Nika has dropped the façade of shyness and plopped down on to the living room table to ham it up. She takes out a pretend makeup kit and starts applying it to her face.

“In Serbia kids are tough,” Nemanja says.

“They’re tougher,” says Mirjana, “for sure.”

The Bjelicas do everything they can to make sure their Serbian heritage is instilled in their children, but also are not afraid to embrace the American ideals their children are exposed to while growing up some 5,000 miles away from home.

“Here they want to try everything,” Mirjana says. “I never tried to dance in Serbia. Here it’s so normal for kids. Or to play hockey or gymnastics or American football. They’re trying everything.”

Mirjana with son Stefan, who was born just before the Timberwolves’ season began. (Credit: Margo LaPanta)

There certainly are differences. As Orthodox Christians, the Bjelicas celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, not Dec. 25, like most of Nika’s friends at school. The language barrier was difficult at first as well, but both parents speak English very well now, and having the Spaniard Rubio in town for those first two years to show them around and help them settle in was invaluable.

From a lifestyle perspective, both say the adjustment has been smooth. Mirjana raves about the convenience of online commerce in the U.S., something that isn’t as available back home. Nika is attending kindergarten now and can’t get enough of school.

“I would like that they have both cultures,” Mirjana says of her children. “I love to explore, to travel, to meet other cultures. So I want them to know everything, to have American mentality and Serbian. A mix is the best for me.”

Stefan was born in the Twin Cities just before the season started. So he will be the first member of the family with an American passport.

“He will be Serbian,” Nemanja says. “He will always have that mentality. That is important for our culture, to know where we are from.”

Rocky road

Bjelica wasn’t the basketball prodigy that Rubio was while growing up in Serbia. That didn’t stop him from dreaming of playing in the NBA.

“When he was playing in Austria, he was saying to our friends, ‘You will see. One day I will play in the NBA,’” Mirjana recalls. “And they were like, ‘Yeah right.’

“He was serious. He said, ‘You will see.’”

After two years in Austria, he came back home to play for Red Star in Belgrade, where coach Svetislav Pesic put the 6-foot-10 youngster at point guard. His ability to play the position, score and make plays finally started to get him some attention, and the Timberwolves acquired him in the second round of the draft in 2010, the same year he and Mirjana were married.

Rather than come over right away, Bjelica stayed overseas to develop his game. He played three seasons in Spain and two for Fenerbahce in Turkey before finally coming to the Wolves in 2015. He was named Euroleague MVP in his final season in Turkey under famed coach Zeljko Obradovic and earned the nickname “Professor Big Shots” for his clutch performances.

Bjelica debuted with the Wolves in 2015-16, tallying 5.1 points in 17.9 minutes per game as he adjusted to his NBA role. (Credit: Brad Rempel/USA TODAY Sports)

The NBA was not so welcoming. Bjelica averaged just 5.1 points and 3.5 rebounds in 17.9 minutes per game in his first season. He was constantly in foul trouble while adapting to a different set of rules and admitted that he wasn’t in the kind of physical shape he needed to be in to compete on a nightly basis.

No matter what was happening in his life, Bjelica had always been able to use basketball as a compass to help him find direction. Playing in his fourth different league and living in his fourth different country in seven years, Bjelica was lost.

“I really had a tough time because people don’t understand, and also my teammates, I told them, the NBA’s the best place to be in the world,” Bjelica said. “But when you feel that in your body, in your skin every night when you play, how miserable you can be, you will just go down or up. There is no middle, you know?”

He would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, waking Mirjana in the middle of the night in a fit of desperation.

“I said, ‘Come on, I want to sleep!’” Mirjana said. “And he’s like, ‘No, what am I doing wrong?’ He couldn’t sleep at all that first year.”

Finding his way



His shooting numbers took a big dip in his second season in the league, and first under Tom Thibodeau, as he struggled to decide when to look for his own shot and when to get teammates involved.

And just when the light bulb appeared to be coming on, he broke the navicular bone in his left foot last March and missed the final 15 games of the season.

For the first time since he came to Minnesota, Bjelica and his family stayed stateside for the summer. The injury prevented him from playing for the Serbian national team, a tremendous disappointment for him, but he was able to experience the pleasant summer weather in a home away from home that spends much of the NBA season coated in ice.

“I didn’t know Minneapolis was such a nice city,” Nemanja said.

Mirjana: “In the summer, it’s perfect.”

Nemanja: “Lakes, nature.”

Mirjana: “Perfect.”

Whether it was the fresh waters of Lake Calhoun or the familiarity with Thibodeau’s system, Bjelica has flourished in his third season in the league. He enters the game in Dallas on Friday night hitting 53 percent of his 3-pointers, the second-highest percentage in the NBA, and has the second-best net rating on the team despite playing just 16 minutes per night.

His ability to shoot, handle, rebound, pass and defend within the team concept makes him the much-coveted “Stretch 4” that has become almost essential to success in the pace-and-space NBA of today.

In Wednesday’s victory over the Spurs, he scored 11 points, grabbed four rebounds and was a plus-15 in 22 minutes. Asking Thibodeau how he is going to get Bjelica on the floor more often has become almost a nightly talking point as the Wolves (9-5) have compiled the third-best record in the Western Conference.

He has only topped 20 minutes in a game three times this season, something that surely should change if he continues to be one of the team’s most productive players.

“The game is slowing down for him a bit, but I think he’s making really good decisions,” Thibodeau said. “He’s putting it on the floor when he should. He’s shooting it when he should. He makes plays for others. I think that’s important.”

In some ways, Bjelica was playing against himself more than the opponent. He had to reconcile the fact that the flashy, high-usage Euroleague MVP role was gone.

“I changed everything. It was tough for me to adjust,” he said. “I’m happy that I beat myself. I won. Now I’m playing here to win. And I deserve this.”

Hoping to stay

As Bjelica continues to play well enough to force himself onto the floor — both with the starters and second unit — the timing couldn’t be better.

“When he is happy and playing, I say, ‘Oh thank God,’” Mirjana says with a big smile. “I am watching and I know he will come home happy and it will be good.”

It’s big for the Wolves, who are hoping to end a 13-year playoff drought. It’s also big for him and his family in his final year before free agency.

If the Bjelicas were to re-sign, it would be the longest they have stayed in one place since they began dating. Nika loves her school and her friends. Mirjana says it finally feels like home and basketball is going well for Nemanja, so all is good.

Bjelica says he never thought about quitting in those difficult early days in the NBA. But he also knows that had he not been injured all those years ago and gone home to Serbia for New Year’s Eve, he never would have crossed paths with the pretty, young brunette who helped him survive those difficult early days in the league.

“We know each other very well and she was my biggest support to my career,” Nemanja said, looking at Mirjana holding Stefan in her arms. “Of course coaches and parents, but without her as my girlfriend, my wife, the mother of my kids, it means a lot to me. Without her, I don’t know if I would be here.”

(Credit: Margo LaPanta)

(Top image of Nemanja Bjelica by Margo LaPanta. Editor’s note: In the interests of privacy, the Bjelicas asked that their children’s faces not be photographed.)