To understand the circus that exists inside the mind of David Mirković, think back to the euphoric Illinois locker room at the Toyota Center in Houston moments after the Illini punched their ticket to the Final Four with a win over Iowa this past March.

The group certainly liked to have fun, and during its March Madness run raucous squirt gun fights had been a staple of postgame celebrations. After the Sweet 16 win over Houston, the coaching staff launched a sneak attack, barging in with Super Soakers blazing to drench the team before the players could spray them first.

There was no way that Mirković was going to let head coach Brad Underwood and the rest of the staff have the last laugh. So two days later, after they had cut down the nets for winning the South Regional, the 20-year-old, 6'9" Montenegrin forward decided to hide on top of the team’s wooden lockers, blue-and-orange squirt gun in hand, with the $32 cowboy hat he bought on Amazon for the week (the Illini were in Texas, after all) inches from the ceiling. 

“He was a 10-year-old with a squirt gun in that moment,” Underwood recalls. “It was like, ‘I don’t just want to stand here and squirt Coach. I want to get up there and just pulverize him.’ ”

“No one saw me,” Mirković says, describing the scene as though he was a character in a video game. “I was just hitting headshots from there.” 

The jubilance from Underwood and the rest of the Illini program faded briefly when they were faced with a situation that Mirković clearly hadn’t thought of when he plotted out his scheme. How was he going to get down? “The floor was crazy slippery,” Mirković says. “Everyone got scared.” 

Job ain’t done. pic.twitter.com/ELg1zt1D7S

— Illinois Men's Basketball (@IlliniMBB) March 29, 2026

A crew of five Illini assembled to help him down. After all, Illinois had two more games it hoped to win, its sights set on an even more chaotic celebration. “There’s no step, there’s nothing to put his foot on and, you know, we’re all trying to take care of his big ass so he doesn’t fall and hurt himself,” Underwood says. “But yeah, that’s the beauty of Mirk.”

“The beauty of Mirk” is an easy catch-all to describe an uncommon soul who has become the leader of one of the best teams in the country and the king of a college town 5,000 miles from his home. Buying a jet ski with his first NIL check and considering it his best purchase ever? The beauty of Mirk. Saying he’d “kill myself probably” (he blames a translation error) if he missed a key game due to injury? The beauty of Mirk. Having 600 students show up to the final exam performance for his DJing class last spring? The beauty of Mirk. 

Terrorizing opponents with his unorthodox yet effective style of play … all with a competitive fire that runs so hot coaches and teammates often need to cool him down? That’s also the beauty of Mirk. 

“There are so many layers to him,” teammate Andrej Stojaković says.

Mirković grew up in Montenegro, a country whose population of 625,000 rivals that of Oklahoma City. His basketball roots come from his mother, Jelena, who stands 6'3" and played with the Yugoslavian national team in the 1990s. Mirković calls his mom a “crazy competitor and winner” and credits her with instilling those qualities in him from a very young age. He may have bordered on being the class clown off the court, but on it he says he always got “really serious and intense,” even before the age where games really started to matter. Two years ago Mirković even had the GPS coordinates of the first basketball court where he ever picked up a ball tattooed on his thigh to remind himself of his first love.

At 14, Mirković moved without his family from his home city of Nikšić an hour away to Montenegro’s capital, Podgorica, to train with a better club: SC Derby, whose senior team plays in the highly competitive Adriatic League. It was there he first teamed up with Tomislav and Zvonimir Ivišić, the 7-foot-plus twins from Croatia who became like brothers to him. College basketball was quite literally a foreign concept to them at the time; well-regarded European prospects rarely considered playing in the NCAA, angling instead for strong professional contracts in Europe. But as NIL paydays exploded, U.S. schools started to aggressively hunt overseas talent. Kentucky signed Zvonimir in 2023, then Tomislav committed to Illinois in ’24. Mirković quickly realized that college was likely his next step, and his agent Miško Ražnatović received plenty of interest once he made it clear his client was open to playing in America. Illinois quickly emerged as the best fit: Underwood had fallen in love with Mirković’s game on film, and there was an established trust there between Ražnatović and the Illinois coaching staff because of Tomislav’s success in the program, so much so that Zvonimir transferred in from Arkansas following the 2024–25 season.

A deal was all but struck before Underwood ever met Mirković in person. To seal it in April 2025, the coach flew to Portland with assistant Geoff Alexander to meet with Mirković following the Hoop Summit, a global all-star game the player had been invited to. They met after the game and conversation flowed naturally … so naturally that they stayed up until 2 a.m. chatting.

“He was very talkative, he was funny, he would have stayed there all night,” Underwood says. “You saw his gregarious personality right there and then. You don’t have to pry conversation out of him, just let him talk, you’ll find out a bunch. He sure wasn’t shy or bashful.”

So Mirković had a new home, uprooting his life from the mountains of Montenegro to the cornfields of central Illinois. He was all-in from the jump, tattooing an Illini jersey on his left thigh next to ones from the first two clubs he had played for before he had ever stepped foot in Champaign. And while the college town didn’t provide the bodies of water necessary to spend his off-court time on jet skis the way he had back home, Mirković quickly knew it was the perfect place for him. There was an added comfort level of being with the Ivišić twins, as well as a fourth player with Balkan ties in Stojaković (from Greece). (Guard Stefan Vaaks, from Estonia, transferred in from Providence this offseason.) The team often blasted music from the region during weightlifting sessions and practice. Plus, Mirković was amazed by the amount of support he had there: state-of-the-art facilities, a big coaching staff and an army of student managers ready to help him at any turn. He says had he known how well players were treated in college basketball, he’d have tried to come to the U.S. sooner and played in prep school. Even those programs are often better resourced than what he was used to.

“Back home where I played at the professional level, we had three coaches total,” Mirković says. “Coming here and seeing all the resources and the conditions we have, it’s a different world. I always had a motivation to work, but when you come here and you see what opportunity you have to improve yourself, my motivation just got bigger.”

Playing for Underwood, known for his fiery demeanor, can sometimes be an adjustment for new players. Not for Mirković, whose mother told Underwood the first time they met that “there’s nothing you can do to him that I haven’t already done.” Between tough love from Mom and the hard coaching he got growing up in Montenegro, he was unfazed. 

“Coaches back home, they were just screaming for nothing,” Mirković says. “When Brad screams at me, [it’s] for a reason.”

And yes, there’s often a reason. Like in his first college game, against Jackson State, when Mirković flung an ill-advised, full-court underhanded pass that nearly hit the scoreboard. Or the emotional outbursts, both in practice and games, when he gets frustrated by opponents or officials. Underwood would have to sit him at times. In practice sometimes the coach tests Mirković by telling the staffers refereeing practice to not give him a single favorable call. 

The initial reaction after watching Mirković on the wrong day in practice might be to wonder how Underwood has any hair left on his head. The 62-year-old coach sees it differently. “Well, I’d sure take him like that than having guys that don’t give a s---,” Underwood quips. 

There’s an understanding throughout the Illinois program that Mirković’s transition from freshman breakout to potential sophomore superstar will require some maturation. The 2025–26 Illini were built around two stars who balanced each other out. Eventual No. 5 NBA draft pick Keaton Wagler was the ultimate stabilizer, emotionally mature well beyond his years. Mirković ran hot and cold but brought a childlike joy and undeniable charisma. With Wagler off to the Clippers and other key senior leaders graduating, Mirković must grow up. Early returns from this offseason have been positive on that front.

“The best way I can put it is him keeping his character while maturing,” Stojaković says. “There are times that he still will kind of crash out, but it’s nowhere nearly as bad and that’s what is most impressive, how much he’s grown.”

“Last year, I was a hothead,” Mirković says. “I’m trying to be different now.” 

Don’t expect all the theatrics to fade though. The emotion he plays with is part of the magic of Mirk, and Illinois needs all of David Mirković if it hopes to make a run at the program’s elusive first national championship. Before breaking his foot in practice on July 31, Mirković had “as dominant a summer” as Underwood says he had ever seen from a player. He underwent successful foot surgery this offseason, then had an emergency appendectomy on Saturday. He will miss the start of the regular season as Illinois takes a cautious approach to his recovery. 

A big part of that is Underwood cracking the code on the best ways to use his uniquely talented star. Mirković has an unorthodox skill set and lacks elite athletic gifts. He’s built like an old-school power forward with a slightly doughy frame at 250 pounds. He shoots threes effectively (37.5% last season), but he isn’t a pure shooting threat. He can handle the ball, can lead the fast break and is an excellent passer. In a way, he does everything well, yet he’s spent much of his career pigeonholed as a traditional big man forced to fit into coaches’ well-established schemes. Even Underwood says he failed Mirković at first: “I was as bad a coach as there was in the country last November,” he says. Eventually, he figured out that the best way to coach Mirković is to give him the freedom to impact the game every which way; by the end of the year, Mirković was the linchpin. He led the team in rebounding at 8.0 per game, setting Illinois’s freshman record with 297 boards, and was third on the team in scoring with 13.3 points per game.

The expectation in reloading the team’s roster this spring was that Mirković would play an even bigger role in how the offense is run this season. The first few practices with Mirković playing as a primary ballhandler made it clear the Illini had something special. “Good players make themselves better, great players make their teammates better,” Underwood says. “He’s a great player. He elevates everybody else and we’ve played off that.” 

Mirković couldn’t be happier. 

“I always wished that I had a team where I would have full freedom to play as a point guard,” he says. “I always said to myself, when I played back home, where I wasn’t satisfied with my situation, I was like, I would be so happy for every day I just could play like a guard. And I had a chance here the whole summer. My old coaches, I don’t blame them, but they just didn’t know how good I was on the ball making decisions. I was actually always the best guy making decisions. They use me here perfectly.”

A season of Mirković as the face of the Illini program, especially if Illinois has the success many are projecting, could make him an even bigger celebrity than he already is in Champaign. Few personalities seem better suited for college-town stardom than Mirković, the spontaneous do-everything big kid who lights up every room he’s in. 

Some examples are very public, like when he transformed into “DJ Smirk” and put on a set at the student union. Mirković was nervous. After all, it served as a final project for the class he was taking, which usually isn’t the best avenue for a viral moment. He says he plans to buy a control board to continue practicing and hopes to DJ again, perhaps next summer while home in Montenegro. He clearly loves bringing people together; even his return announcement for his sophomore year was done via a Twitch stream that had him chatting back and forth with fans before he officially declared he’d be returning. 

Other moments are more mundane, but equally memorable. Mirković made an appearance at an Illinois tennis match last winter because his cousin Simon Knežević was playing for the opponent, Illinois-Chicago. After the match ended, Mirković popped onto the court, grabbed a racket and started volleying balls across the net to a 10-year-old boy he met in the stands. 

“That’s just who he is,” Underwood says. “Whether you’re 10 or 80, everybody likes him.”

Being a basketball player at a hoops-obsessed school like Illinois can wear on you. After the team defeated Iowa to punch its Final Four ticket, Mirković says he couldn’t even make it to the lobby of his apartment building to pick up food delivery without getting multiple requests for pictures. He and other teammates needed police escorts to get to class on time, then had to pivot to online classes for a few weeks due to all the excitement. Mirković says he now picks his spots and tries to maintain a lower profile, but you’ll still see him out at football games and around town. 

“I think he’s better at it than anybody else on the team is,” Illinois wing Jake Davis says. “I think a lot of us, you know, have mixed feelings about it, but I think he’s one person that actually enjoys it at all times. He loves to give back to the community.”

“It’s the dream of every basketball player to have a lot of fans,” Mirković says. “[Illinois] fans are some of the best in the country.” 

In fewer than 18 months in the U.S., Mirković has gone from relative unknown to Mr. Champaign, a story that would have been impossible to script for a player who wasn’t even considering college basketball a few years ago. And with a platform as big as the one he’ll have this season, don’t be surprised when the joy he goes through life with wins over even more fans around the world. 

“God, I’m so jealous,” Underwood says. “That guy loves life. He loves people, whether it’s as DJ Smirk or taking a trip to New York with his family or trip to L.A. to see his girlfriend, he just loves it. Everything that comes, no matter what it is, he’s got a positive outlook. The world would be a lot better place if we had a bunch of people with that attitude. It’s contagious.” 

Or, as Davis puts it: “Mirk never has a bad day.” 

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