Dino Rađa (Anglicized: Dino Radja, Croatian pronunciation: [ˌdǐːno ˈrâd͜ʑa]) (born 24 April 1967), is a retired Croatian professional basketball player. He was a member of the Jugoplastika team of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which he helped to win two FIBA European Champions Cup championships (1989 and 1990). He spent three and a half seasons with the Boston Celtics, being one of the European pioneers in the NBA. Rađa was named one of FIBA\'s 50 Greatest Players in 1991, and one of the 50 Greatest EuroLeague Contributors in 2008. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, as a member of the 2018 class.\n', '

Rađa began his basketball life in his native town, as a junior at KK Dalvin. He moved to KK Split, which at the time went under the name of its longtime naming-rights sponsor Jugoplastika. At KK Split, Rađa starred alongside Toni Kukoč, while both were teenagers. The duo led the team to dominance of the FIBA European Champions Cup, with repeat championship seasons in (1989 and 1990).\n', '

In late June 1989, the 22-year-old center got drafted by the Boston Celtics in the second round as the 40th pick. Right away, he publicly expressed willingness to go to Boston immediately, "if the financial offer is good", and thus join fellow Yugoslavs Vlade Divac, Dražen Petrović, and Žarko Paspalj, who were also on their way to the NBA that summer. However, led by the club\'s general manager Josip Bilić, Jugoplastika was adamant Rađa would not be released since they had him under contract until 1992. The entire case quickly turned into a months-long saga that played out in the Yugoslav media. The club\'s head coach, Božidar Maljković, even publicly called on the Yugoslav Basketball Association (KSJ) to adopt safeguard policies, preventing players younger than age 26 from transferring to NBA teams. After weeks of wrangling over his status, Rađa tried to force Jugoplastika\'s hand by physically going over to the U.S. in early August 1989 and unilaterally signing a one-year contract with the Celtics, reportedly worth in the neighborhood of $500,000. He furthermore began practicing with the team at their Brandeis University training facilities. However, seeing the situation as a clear case of contract poaching by Boston and its general manager Jan Volk (who claimed Rađa\'s contract with Jugoplastika was amateur and thus non-binding), the Split club would not give up the legal fight, taking the case to the United States district court for the District of Massachusetts and seeking an injunction to prevent Rađa from playing for the Celtics on the grounds that he had a valid and legally binding contract with them. Following a hearing on 26 September 1989, Judge Douglas Woodlock ruled in their favor two days later thus preventing Rađa from playing for the Celtics. Since Rađa was physically already in Boston, bringing him back required some kind of an agreement. By mid-November 1989, Jugoplastika and the Celtics agreed to terms under which the player went back to Yugoslavia to complete the 1989–90 season in Split before having the rights to his services transferred to the Celtics effective 1 June 1990. The deal centered around the Celtics paying an undisclosed sum of money to Jugoplastika, which in turn agreed to let Rađa go two years short of his contract\'s completion.\n', '

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