At Final Four, Dreams Are of Family Reunion

Children of war are not always found in bombed-out buildings or along crumbling streets.

Sometimes they are on folding chairs in basketball locker rooms, dazed, sweating, surrounded by questions they cannot answer, filled with a fear they cannot show.

“Please, I cannot talk about it,” says Slobodan “Boban” Savovic, Ohio State’s 19-year-old freshman guard. “I will talk about anything else but that.”

He could stand up, walk away from the dozen reporters crowding him at this Friday interview session, but he does not.

This is America, where for two years, says the Yugoslav visitor, “People who don’t even know me, they treat me like family.”

This is one of America’s biggest sporting events, the Final Four, and many want to know how the 6-foot-6 reserve guard feels about playing Connecticut in today’s first semifinal game.

He wants to tell them. He wants to pay people back for their kindness. He wants to wax in a freedom he never thought possible.

So he stays and faces the questions.

Even as his home country is being bombed by the home country of many of the reporters asking them.

“A lot of innocent people are getting killed,” he says, shaking his head, staring at the carpet. “But I cannot talk about it anymore.”

So, his left shoulder talks.

On it, underneath his shirt, is a tattoo.

“How is it going to end?” it reads.

And, his eyes talk.

Darkly, deeply, he looks up at each questioner with the expression of someone who is lost and has only fleeting hope that you will have directions.

When he is on the basketball court, with strong moves and a quick jump shot, he looks 25.

When he is sitting here, pain and longing etched into his pale face, he looks 10.

“I miss my mother and father,” he says slowly. “I have not seen them in two years. I miss them.”

And, his hands talk.

They are huge, thick and sweaty as he rubs them together, crosses his arms and rubs them on his wide shoulders, again and again and again.

“Sometimes I feel like, I don’t want to mess up now,” he says.

An Ohio State official, sitting next to Savovic in this cramped circle of chairs in the Ohio State locker room at Tropicana Field, senses it may be time.

He lightly touches Savovic’s knee. The kid could leave now. Nobody would mind.

“Listening to him, watching him, I actually teared up a couple of times,” says Gerry Emig, Ohio State sports information director later. “He’s talking about not seeing his family, about missing his country. . . . You know, none of us know anything about being bombed. None of us really know what war is.”

Savovic feels the nudge. He doesn’t move. He looks up. Next question?

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Boban Savovic is Serbian, not ethnic Albanian. But this weekend it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that his parents, Nikola and Olivera, still live in the Montenegro city of Hercegnovi, about 100 miles west of Kosovo, the site of the most intense fighting.

What matters is that several times this year, they traveled to the American embassy in Belgrade to obtain a visa to visit their son, who departed two years ago.

Every time, they waited several days before learning that the visa had been denied.

They will not be able to watch him this weekend, even on television, because there will be no television.

“Every time they go, the embassy finds some other reason to deny the visa,” Savovic says. “I don’t understand.”

So once he returns to the hotel after today’s game, he will call them, just as he has called them once a week for the last two years.

“Sometimes I have to wait 30 minutes to get through, but then I get through, and it is good,” he says.

Funny, he thinks, that this search for freedom can sometimes lead you to prison.

Savovic has been in this limbo since moving to the United States to live with his uncle outside Newark, N.J., two years ago.

He came because, had he remained in Yugoslavia, his only choices were to sign a mandatory seven-year contract with a professional team or join the military.

“The professional teams there do not pay you like they promise, and you cannot get an education,” he says. “I sat down with my parents and we decided, I would come here to get my education.”

That happened quicker than he thought.

Upon reaching New York’s Grand Central Station after his arrival in America, he realized nobody had come to pick him up. Even though he barely spoke English, he found his way to Newark.

“For me, [pressure] is fun, that’s the way I like it,” he says. “That is when I do my best.”

After leading his high school team to a state championship, he joined Ohio State this fall, and scored only 11 points in his first eight games.

“I was used to New York,” he says. “Columbus is so . . . quiet.”

Yet by the end of the season, he had become an important spark for a smooth veteran team.

He scored five of his six points in the first half of the Buckeyes’ NCAA opener against Murray State to start the rout.

He made two three-pointers in the second round against Detroit Mercy.

He scored seven points in the Buckeyes’ three-point win over St. John’s in the South Regional championship.

“I am patient now,” he says. “I will get more opportunity later.”

He exhibited some of that patience earlier this week during an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, just before the NATO attacks began, when he was able to be more open.

“I am hurt, of course. . . . Who wouldn’t be?” Savovic said then. “My country has been at war for the last 10 years, and I don’t even know why. Who knows why?”

He added, “There are kids everywhere, and they don’t know if they are going to die tomorrow, and it is not their fault. . . . I don’t get into politics. I don’t care about politics. I just want it to stop. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. I am afraid there will be more innocent dead people. I don’t like anybody to die.”

Then the bombing started, and the talk stopped, and there he is Friday, admitting only one thing, but it was everything.

“I just really wish I could see my parents,” he says.

He is asked, did you have a happy childhood?

“I thought I’m still having a childhood,” he says, raising his eyebrows, but it is a question, not a statement, and there is no answer.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.