With planes overhead bringing explosions to shatter the Zagreb landscape, Korie Hlede and her family often ran for cover in the basement during the year-and-a-half war a decade ago that split Yugoslavia into Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia.
Croatians called it the liberation war. It took them from Communism to democracy, though Hlede, the Utah Starzz guard, says many in her homeland were disappointed the American-dream life didn't come to them immediately at war's end. "Hopefully, in 20-30 years, it's going to be better, but at least there's no more war, and people can actually live their own lives and not worry about whether they're going to be alive tomorrow," said Hlede prior to a recent Starzz practice.
Such an experience changes lives forever. Hlede lost three close friends to the fighting, and a cousin is an invalid. "I don't take nothing for granted," Hlede says, adding she prepares for the future while having fun in the present. "You don't need war to know that you can be next tomorrow."
Yet Hlede's life may have been altered even more by two decisions she made, one at age 13 and another at 18.
The first made her a dedicated basketball player. The second brought her to America for school, then for the WNBA and eventually the Starzz. Hlede will be the starting off-guard again Wednesday night at 8 p.m. MDT when Utah opens its fifth season on the road at Phoenix, in the America West Arena.
Depending upon the game situations, Hlede could slide over to play point guard, too. A preseason experiment — while Jennifer Azzi rested a broken toe — made that a tempting option. Hlede and rookie two-guard Marie Ferdinand formed a potent and athletic combination.
Hlede doesn't mind playing point, though many people think she hates it. "I think that's a misunderstanding," she says, noting she played point on her national team and in college.
"Two-guard, in WNBA, I prefer to play it only because I'm used to it — I feel that I can take anybody on the court one-on-one. But I like being in control of the ball, making decisions, passing the ball, so to me either/or is good. I always thought of myself as a one-point-five, not really a two," Hlede said.
Hlede started late in basketball. She had played soccer on boys' teams, but there was no future for girls in Croatian soccer. Otherwise, she'd be a soccer pro now. "I admit, I'm that good," she says.
At 13, when she first picked up a basketball, Hlede could sense the hardcourt was her future. "I remember clearly, we went to one tournament, and I was with an older group," Hlede recalled. "All these players were so good, I said to myself, 'I'm going to be as good as them.'
"I guess there's always a point in life that sticks out in terms of making decisions, and that was the point for me."
She devoted her skills and thoughts to basketball. "I didn't have no friends. I just had basketball. I hardly saw my family," she says.
War interfered. Reflecting, Hlede laughs at herself. "I just looked at it very selfishly because when the war started, I was like, 'I can't go to practice, I can't go to school.' People are dying, and I'm concerned about my everyday existence. I guess, as a 16-year-old, you can't do any better."
But soon she would make a most mature choice, turning down a $60,000 offer from an Italian team to instead enroll at Duquesne and leave friends and family behind. "For me the whole world opened up, and for them, the world closed. I took some risks, but I got a lot of lucky breaks," she says.
Hlede would become the school record-holder in six major statistical categories and rank second in Atlantic 10 Conference career scoring. Her jersey was the first the school ever retired. But her real purpose was education.
"At that time, I knew something was missing in my life," Hlede said. "In Croatia, I was the definition of a slacker. In high school, I was like, 'Let's get this over with.' In college, 'I don't want to get this over.' I really loved school. I liked going to classes 10 times more than going to practice.
"You see yourself empty. For me, education was really the answer. There was a whole world out there I was ready to immerse myself in."
Detroit made her the No. 4 pick overall in the 1998 WNBA draft, and she rewarded the Shock with 14.1 points a game, 10th in the league, before an Aug. 11 knee injury. Some 353 days later, in July 1999, Hlede was traded to Utah. She was hurt. She'd come to Detroit early in the preseason at the Shock's request, thereby missing time with her national team that she later felt might have made the Olympics with her help. The Shock showed its gratitude by trading her while her parents were visiting from Croatia.
"After I got over the bitterness of the trade, you remember good stuff, and I'm always going to remember it fondly," she says of Detroit. "I love being here, and I try to show it with my attitude and my speaking. I think it's the perfect place to be in the WNBA because there's not many distractions."
Last season she averaged 10.1 points, third on the Starzz, and led the WNBA with 43.1 percent 3-point shooting. After playing the winter in Brazil, where teams practice five or six hours a day, Hlede says she's in great physical shape and anxious to see how a team that's been together for a year now can perform.
E-mail: lham@desnews.com