Milan MaÃÂvan (; born 16 November 1989) is a Serbian politician and former professional basketball player serving as the deputy mayor of à  abac since 19 January 2024. Standing at , he played at the power forward position. He also represented the Serbian national basketball team internationally. He was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the 54th overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft.
Born to a professional basketball player father who had been playing for in the First B Federal League (second-tier basketball league in Yugoslavia), infant MaÃÂvan fled the town of his birth with his mother for Novi Sad due to the disintegration of SFR Yugoslavia and the outbreak of war in SR Croatia. The family soon returned to Vukovar where the youngster took up organized youth basketball at KK Borovo at age 5 but shortly following the war moved back to Serbia, settling in BaÃÂka Palanka.
After being noticed by coach Milovan Bulatoviàat a basketball camp in Poà ¾arevac, fourteen-year-old MaÃÂvan joined the FMP youth system in 2004. Initially coached by BulatoviÃÂ, the teenager kept progressing within the FMP youth ranksâÂÂmoving to the next age group, under-19, coached by Slobodan Klipa.
Before even getting an opportunity to play full squad basketball at FMP, MaÃÂvan started turning heads via successful appearances at junior and cadet European and World championships as part of the Serbian national youth teams.
In fall 2007, ahead of the 2007âÂÂ08 season, having passed through multiple youth system age groups at KK FMP, the 17-year-old was attached to FMP's full squad under head coach Vlada VukoiÃÂiÃÂ. He appeared in five Adriatic League games for them before transferring to KK Hemofarm in mid-December 2007.
MaÃÂvan did not have a professional contract during his time at à ½eleznik due to being underage; however, once he turned eighteen in November 2007, he turned down the option of signing one at à ½eleznik and somewhat surprisingly chose to do so with rival KK Hemofarm, which paid à ½eleznik a â¬150,000 transfer fee for his services. The biggest reason behind his decision to sign with Hemofarm rather than remain with à ½eleznik was wanting to be with Hemofarm's head coach Miroslav Nikoliàwho had also coached MaÃÂvan in the Serbia under-19 team that won the 2007 FIBA Under-19 World Championship.
Signing a four-year contract with Hemofarm on 18 December 2007, MaÃÂvan joined a young squad featuring talented 19-year-olds Stefan MarkoviÃÂ, Boban MarjanoviÃÂ, and Petar DespotoviÃÂ. A couple of months later, during spring 2008, coach Nikoliàresigned his post at Hemofarm after a string of poor results, and the club brought in Vlada VukoiÃÂiÃÂ, MaÃÂvan's coach at à ½eleznik, who had gotten fired there in the meantime.
On 11 April 2009, 19-year-old MaÃÂvan appeared at the 2009 Nike Hoop Summit game at Portland's Rose Garden alongside prospects such as Donatas Motiejà «nas, Nikos Pappas, and Kevin Séraphin. Playing on Team World, they faced Team USA featuring Xavier Henry, John Henson, John Wall, Avery Bradley, and Mason Plumlee. MaÃÂvan was the game's MVP with 23 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 assists leading the World team to their first win over the USA team since 1998.
On 17 December 2010, MaÃÂvan signed a five-year contract with EuroLeague contenders Maccabi Tel Aviv. Macvan played at the 2010âÂÂ11 EuroLeague Final, Scoring 3 points and grabbing 4 rebounds in 12 minutes.
On 18 October 2011, MaÃÂvan signed a one-year loan deal with KK Partizan. Over 10 EuroLeague games, he averaged career-high 15.3 points and 8.2 rebounds per game.
On 30 July 2012, MaÃÂvan signed two-year contract with Turkish team Galatasaray Medical Park who also competed in the EuroLeague. MaÃÂvan's former club Maccabi Tel Aviv received a â¬250,000 transfer fee from Galatasaray for the player's services.
On 17 October 2014, MaÃÂvan signed a contract with his former club KK Partizan until the end of season.
On 15 July 2015, MaÃÂvan signed a two-year contract with the Italian club EA7 Emporio Armani Milano. In November 2015, he broke his right hand, and was expected to miss six weeks of action.
On 21 July 2017, MaÃÂvan signed a two-year deal with German club Bayern Munich.
In July 2019, MaÃÂvan signed for Alvark Tokyo of the Japanese B.League.
On 1 June 2020, MaÃÂvan announced his retirement from his basketball career at age 31.
|- | style="text-align:left;"| 2010âÂÂ11 | style="text-align:left;"| Maccabi | 12 || 1 || 9.0 || .438 || .200 || .813 || 1.7 || .4 || .2 || .3 || 3.5 || 3.6 |- | style="text-align:left;"| 2011âÂÂ12 | style="text-align:left;"| Partizan | 10 || 9 || 31.6 || .558 || .375 || .833 || 8.2 || 2.2 || 1.0 || .1 || 15.3 || 15.8 |- | style="text-align:left;"| 2013âÂÂ14 | style="text-align:left;"| Galatasaray | 26 || 6 || 19.5 || .476 || .325 || .759 || 4.5 || 1.0 || .3 || .3 || 6.8 || 9.3 |- | style="text-align:left;"| 2015âÂÂ16 | style="text-align:left;"| Milano | 6 || 4 || 20.0 || .463 || .364 || .900 || 4.3 || 2.0 || .8 || .0 || 10.0 || 14.0 |- | style="text-align:left;"| 2016âÂÂ17 | style="text-align:left;"| Milano | 28 || 24 || 22.2 || .534 || .375 || .795 || 4.4 || 1.4 || .4 || .0 || 8.4 || 10.0 |- class="sortbottom" | style="text-align:center;" colspan="2"| Career | 86 || 44 || 19.4 || .498 || .341 || .806 || 4.6 || 1.2 || .4 || .2 || 8.0 || 9.8
Even before getting the first-team action on the club level with FMP, MaÃÂvan began playing international competitions for Serbian national youth teams.
In 2007, 17-year-old MaÃÂvan had a busy and successful summer. First, in mid-July, he led the Serbian under-19 team to victory at the Under-19 World Cup in Novi Sad, earning the MVP honours in the process. In the final, Serbia defeated the United States team featuring Stephen Curry and DeAndre Jordan. Then, only ten days later, MaÃÂvan was included by head coach Dejan MijatoviÃÂ on the Serbian under-18 team, leading it to gold at the Under-18 European Championship in Madrid, with a team-best 19.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game over 8 games. For his efforts, at the end of 2007, MaÃÂvan received the Golden Badge Award as the Best Young Athlete of the Year in Serbia given by Sport newspaper.
In early August 2008, 18-year-old MaÃÂvan played for the Serbian under-20 team at the 2008 FIBA Europe Under-20 Championship in Riga, Latvia. Coached by Slobodan Klipa, this time around, MaÃÂvan's stats weren't as dominant as the duo of Miroslav Raduljica and Marko Keà ¡elj took over the leading roles in the beginning stages of the tournament. However, as the matches progressed, MaÃÂvan started regaining top form and made a huge contribution in the final versus Lithuania, leading the team with 31 points. He finished the tournament with 16.9 points and 6.6 rebounds per game over 8 games.
In late summer 2009, coming off a great club season at Hemofarm as well as helping Serbia win the 2009 Universiade tournament on home soil in early July, MaÃÂvan made the Serbian national team 12-man roster head coach Duà ¡an Ivkoviàtook to EuroBasket 2009 in Poland. Being on a young squad whose oldest members were 26-year-olds Bojan Popoviàand Nenad KrstiÃÂ, 19-year-old MaÃÂvan was the squad's youngest player.
Despite the player's youth and inexperience at the big stage, coach IvkoviÃÂ gave MaÃÂvan decent minutes off the bench at his major tournament debut game versus world champions, Olympic silver medalists, and EuroBasket runners-up Spain that Serbia surprisingly won 66-57 while MaÃÂvan contributed with 8 points and 3 rebounds in 17 minutes of action, hitting two clutch three-pointers in the third quarter, incidentally his only field goals of the contest. The group stage continued with a loss versus Slovenia and this time MaÃÂvan got 18 minutes backing up Novica VeliÃÂkoviÃÂ at the power forward position as his scoring output dropped off to 4 points.
In the second group stage outings â wins against host Poland followed by a loss to Turkey â MaÃÂvan's playing time decreased, before getting a slight bump versus Lithuania in the closing group stage contest while his scoring contribution became almost negligible.
At the first single-elimination stage, quarterfinal win versus Russia, the youngster's game saw a slight boost with 5 points, though this was followed by a complete omission in the hard-fought semifinal overtime win versus Slovenia as IvkoviÃÂ preferred the more experienced VeliÃÂkoviÃÂ. In the final the next day, tired and emotionally spent Serbian team lost big to Spain with young MaÃÂvan getting little opportunity to play.
MaÃÂvan played at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey, and at the EuroBasket 2011 in Lithuania.
In early July 2013, despite receiving a call-up for EuroBasket 2013, twenty-three-year-old MaÃÂvan didn't show up at the Serbian national team training camp. Asked by the Serbian media about the reasons for MaÃÂvan not being there, head coach IvkoviÃÂ said he didn't know them and revealed that the "coaching staff's attempts to reach the player in order to see what's going on were unsuccessful". As a result of MaÃÂvan's failure to show up, IvkoviÃÂ decided to make two subsequent call-ups, to 20-year-old Nemanja KrstiÃÂ and 21-year-old Nikola KaliniÃÂ both of whom went on to make the final 12-man roster and make their competitive debuts for the national team.
In early June 2014, the national team's newly appointed head coach Saà ¡a ÃÂorÃÂeviàannounced MaÃÂvan alongside 28 other individuals on the preliminary list of players he was considering for the 12 final roster spots at the 2014 FIBA World Cup. On 1 July, announcing the official call-ups for the start of the training camp, ÃÂorÃÂeviàcrossed out 9 names from the preliminary list including MaÃÂvan's, saying the 24-year-old got excluded for tactical reasons while adding he had "an unfocused season [at Galatasaray] without a specific position". Two days later when Novica VeliÃÂkoviÃÂ, one of the 20 players who received call-ups, announced he wouldn't be showing up to training camp due to knee injury, agitated ÃÂorÃÂeviàcriticized him in the media: "I'm blindsided and disappointed by VeliÃÂkoviÃÂ's unfair move. We've been in constant contact before the call-up list had been announced and not once did he mention anything about an injury... More than anything else he owes an explanation to Duà ¡ko Savanoviàand Milan MaÃÂvan, two players that weren't called-up because I gave VeliÃÂkoviàthe advantage over them. If you're wondering if I'll now be calling-up either Savanoviàor MaÃÂvan, I won't be. My face is way too red in front of them over this to do that now".
In mid June 2016, shortly after getting a national team call-up ahead of the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, MaÃÂvan broke his pinky toe, an injury that required a cast. The injury prevented him from taking part in the Qualifying Tournament at home in Belgrade that Serbia managed to win and qualify for the Olympics. Despite the injury, national team head coach ÃÂorÃÂeviÃÂ did not write MaÃÂvan off; instead waiting for his injury to heal and eventually picking the power forward for the final 12-man squad taken to the Olympics.
MaÃÂvan represented Serbia at the 2016 Summer Olympics where they won the silver medal, after losing to the United States in the final game with 96âÂÂ66.
MaÃÂvan also represented and captained Serbia at the EuroBasket 2017 where they won the silver medal, after losing in the final game to Slovenia. Over 9 tournament games, he averaged 10.8 points, 4 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game.
On 6 August 2020, the KK Partizan announced that they had hired MaÃÂvan as a sporting advisor to the club president. In November 2020, he left his KK Partizan post.
MaÃÂvan has been producing hazelnuts since 2016, then cherries, and then entered the world of tillage.
MaÃÂvan is aligned with the ruling populist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and was elected to the à  abac City Assembly following the 2023 local elections. On 19 January 2024, MaÃÂvan was elected deputy mayor of à  abac.
MaÃÂvan was born in Vukovar, into an ethnic Serb family. At three years of age (1992âÂÂ93), together with his family, he left the war-stricken Vukovar for Serbia, living in Novi Sad with his mother for a period. At six years of age, he returned briefly to Vukovar, where he started playing organized basketball with KK Vukovar. The family then moved to BaÃÂka Palanka in northern Serbia.
His family has the slava (feast day) of Miholjdan (St. Cyriacus the Anchorite) 12 October, and he has said that he believes in God and goes to church. He has a younger sister, Jelena (born 1995), who briefly played volleyball.