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Mirza Teletovic’s Heartbreaking and Motivational Life Story

You all know Mirza Teletovic. Mirza the NBA player, Mirza the incredible shooter… but not many know his life story which is unlike any other.

Mirza Teletovic lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. He grew up in the city of Mostar, the subject of an 18-month siege when he was a child. What he had to live through as a kid is mindblowing. The cruelty and uncertainty of not knowing if you’d survive another day.

“I was seven years old when the war started. First you start seeing that there’s no food, then grenades come down, the whole city is shaking, and you hear people screaming. Every day, your parents come in and say ‘our neighbor died, our cousin died’. Always somebody dying. One day, I asked my mother, ‘Is anybody alive?’ It was very, very rough for us. It left, I will say, a memory”. Teletović added, “All my friends and me are playing [basketball] and then you hear the sirens like the grenades start falling down and just run to your house and hide. If I have to die, I die. For basketball, I will do anything”.