Vlade Divac - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In the early 1990s, the song "Vlade Divac" by Belgrade band Deca Loših Muzičara, devoted to his transfer to Lakers, was a big hit; the band finally got to personally meet Divac and perform the song with him on his farewell party in 2007.

During his time with the Lakers, Divac's popularity and marketing potential, in addition to his entertaining and good-natured personality, were picked up on by the American TV industry. As a result he appeared quite a few times on Los Angeles-based late night programmes such as The Arsenio Hall Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 1990, he was featured in a commercial with Laker teammates A. C. Green and Mychal Thompson for the Schick brand razors company. He also appeared in American sitcoms Married... with Children and Coach, as well as in the short lived Good Sports sitcom. On the big screen Divac took part in basketball-based movies Eddie, Space Jam and Juwanna Mann. Later in his career, he appeared on Larry King Live in 1999 and The Late Late Show in 2002.

In Serbia, all throughout his playing career, Divac regularly appeared in commercials pitching products ranging from Atlas Beer to Societe Generale Bank mortgage credit plans. He appeared in a national TV commercial in the United States alongside former NBA star Darryl Dawkins for Taco Bell.

Divac appeared as a special guest on Eurovision 2008. He threw a ball into the audience, which marked the beginning of televoting.

Divac features in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Once Brothers, where he discusses the exploits of the Yugoslavia national basketball team in the late 1980s and early 1990s and how the Yugoslav Wars tore them apart, especially in context of his broken friendship with Croatian player Dražen Petrović.

Divac appears in Boris Malagurski's documentary film The Weight of Chains, in which he talks about the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.