What The Hell Happened To: Dragan Tarlac

Hair is SO overrated

While it probably wasn't easy growing up with the name Dragan Tarlac, that's still no excuse for the false hope he gave the Bulls. First of all, we drafted in him in 1995, but he played his first game for us in 2000 when he was done in Europe. Tarlac wasn't even a young or inexperienced player when he came to the Bulls. Dragan first got into professional basketball in 1990 (albeit not the NBA), so you'd think he'd have gotten some experience. Dragan shot above 57% for the first ten years in Greece before he came to the Bulls -- you'd think it would be safe to expect some sort of success, right?

Wrong -- Enter the Dragan.

In 2000, Tarlac "boasted" an amazing 39.4% shooting percentage, averaging 2.4 points a game (compared with 9.8 the year before in Greece). In fact, every major statistic went downhill except for shooting from the line, where he annihilated Ben Wallace's dream numbers by shooting 75.8% from the line. He went to the Olympics that year, too. Somehow. At the end of 2001, Tarlac was simply a bad memory in the mind of Bulls fans.

What the hell happened to Dragan Tarlac?

After the "wonderful" 2000 season, Dragan quietly went back to Europe...where he rebounded quite nicely, averaging 10 points a game. What the hell. Tarlac played for Real Madrid (not Soccer) from 2001 to 2004, finally retiring after playing for CSKA (Moscow) in 2004. With basketball behind him, Tarlac did what any other Ridica native would do.

Unload coal.

That's right -- in 2005, Tarlac teamed up with USAID, an organization that helps farm towns like Ridica. Here's a USAID news blurb from 2005 that says it all:

"They remember when he returned home for a visit...he and several fellow players that he’d brought along, rolled up their sleeves to unload coal for the local school."

What a hero, that Dragan Tarlac. He's been with USAID since 2005, and most recently was part of a story in Dekani where they collected money for Decani Monks.

Guess which oversized white guy is Dragan Tarlac