As much as NBA players live luxurious lives, what with all the fame and fortune that they possess, it also cannot be denied that they spend a substantial part of the year traveling from one place to another.
With every NBA team playing 41 road games, that means the players are basically living off their suitcases and going from one city to another at such dizzying rates that there are times they don’t even know which city they’re waking up in.
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But such is the life of an NBA player and one who’s well-versed with the dynamics is Hall of Famer Vlade Divac. The 7’1″ center from Serbia, after all, played in the NBA for 16 seasons, meaning he’s taken hundreds of flights during his time in the big league.
But according to Vlade, one flight stands out for its tense nature. And fortunately for him, it wasn’t one he was on.
The Kings were on their way to Cleveland
As the story goes, Divac was playing for the Sacramento Kings, the close-knit team he helped lead to elite status in the early 2000s. But with his family based in Los Angeles, Divac recalled that he often flew to the City of Angels every chance he could.
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“We were supposed to leave from Sacramento to Cleveland and I was supposed to fly from L.A. to Sacramento and then go with the team. But then I figured out it was easier for me to just fly from LAX straight to Cleveland and meet them there,” Divac revealed of that fateful flight.
“I was lucky. Back then, the owner of the Kings was from L.A., so he was flying with us. When we would go on East Coast trips and come back, he would make the plane land in L.A. first and then go to Sacramento. So I would go with him,” he continued. “So I meet the team in Cleveland and all my teammates — especially Peja Stojakovic — because everybody talked about how lucky I was, right?”
The flight to Cleveland, though, wasn’t what any of the Kings bargained for. With turbulence rocking the plane a lot more than usual, a few players began to panic and feared for the worst.
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“So they flying to Cleveland and then turbulence starts. The plane going up and down and they freaked out. They thought they were going to go down,” Vlade shared with a smile on his face. “And Peja looked at the seat next to him — empty — and said, ‘Vlade again. Lucky. He’s going to survive.'”
Vlade vowed never to take money from his teammates
With players spending so much time on planes, one of their favorite pastimes is playing cards. And when cards are involved, gambling isn’t far behind. While this pastime can forge camaraderie, it can also cause a lot of trouble between teammates, especially when it comes to gambling debts.
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But according to Vlade, he had no such trouble on the teams he played for, disclosing that everyone maintained a specific level of professionalism at all times.
“My teams — I played with the Los Angeles Lakers, the Charlotte Hornets, the Sacramento Kings and then I came back and played with the Lakers — all those teams were winning teams. So we were really professional,” he explained. “We didn’t do any crazy stuff. We were focused on the game.”
Comparing this gambling experience to a heavy-turbulence flight he managed to avoid, Vlade was certainly glad to take the money-risk instead of risking his own life.
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This story was originally published by Basketball Network on May 25, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.