INDIANAPOLIS -- Two days after it was over, he flew several thousand miles to escape. It didn't work.

"I thought it would be much nicer at home (in Yugoslavia), but it was worse," Peja Stojakovic said. "So many questions from my friends. They stay awake late at night, and they thought we had a chance. I also believed that we had a chance. But it just so happened that I missed that shot."

It is not a shot he likes to remember because, unlike almost all of the hundreds of ones he shot in his best season ever in the NBA, it hit nothing. No twine, no backboard. Air. And as it came with 10 seconds left in overtime of Game 7 of the Western Conference finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, with his Sacramento Kings down two points and a trip to the NBA Finals on the line, Stojakovic feels horrible about it.

	Vlade Divac, left, and Peja Stojakovic halted their offseasons of discontent to win a Worlds title for Yugoslavia.

"People were up (at 4 or 5 a.m.) in Greece, and Yugoslavia," he said. "In Yugoslavia, in the big square, they put up a big screen and people were awake and on the square, screaming. It was a big disappointment for everyone."

Hedo Turkoglu had just about gotten Robert Horry's last-moment Game 4 pyrotechnics out of his mind ... until Marcelo Machado of Brazil dropped a 3-pointer out of the sky at the buzzer to beat Turkoglu's Turkey squad the second day of the World Championships and seriously damage the medal hopes of what his countrymen call "12 Dev Adam" -- "The Twelve Giant Men."

"That guy made that shot, and I saw that Lakers game," Turkoglu said. "Second time in my life I've had a feeling like that. It's the kind of experience you never forget."

Vlade Divac says he doesn't think about it until some reporter asks him.

"You can't do anything about it," he says. "The only thing you can do positive is say, 'Hey, we were there, and next year is a year we should step over that, (with) Keon Clark, Mike (Bibby) signing.' Everything is falling into place."

They say they have forgotten about it, these Three Kings, and yet you wonder. You wondered about the ones playing here in the World Championships, and the contemplative, brooding ones like C-Webb, who take it all to heart. It takes the toughest of temperaments to recover from what Sacramento went through in late May and early June. Magic Johnson had to take losing Game 7 of the Finals in 1984. Isiah Thomas had to take throwing his team's ticket to the Finals into the hands of Larry Bird. Michael Jordan had to take three straight years of pounding at the hands of the Pistons.

They overcame. But it took every ounce of will they possessed. A lot of teams come close but never push through. And that is the challenge facing the Kings. To have the world champions on the ropes, unable to stop what you're doing, to be within a second of a 3-1 lead ... and then, after fighting back to take a 3-2 lead, with two shots at the Finals on your racket ... to come up short in the biggest games of your lives -- how do you deal with that? And are you tough enough to push through?

Stojakovic acknowledged that the subject has come up since late July, when Divac joined the Yugoslavian team for full-time training.

"We talk about it sometimes, how good a chance we had to beat the Lakers and go to the Finals," Stojakovic said. "When we look at the Finals with the Lakers and New Jersey, we talk, 'OK, we just needed to beat the Lakers and we're NBA champions.' But it's past now. You cannot think about it."

The Lakers series was especially tough for Stojakovic, who missed the first four games with a severely sprained ankle suffered in the conference semifinal against Dallas. He came back and played in the last three games against L.A., but he was a shell of his All-Star self, shooting just 30 percent from the floor. Down the stretch of Game 7 and into overtime, it might have been wiser if Rick Adelman had sat Stojakovic, stayed small and used more of Bobby Jackson, whose quickness had given the Lakers guards fits. But Adelman, right or wrong, stayed loyal to the guy who had killed himself to return and help his teammates.

"When I came back to play against the Lakers in that series, I wasn't ready physically," said Stojakovic, who still has pain in the ankle after workouts and games. "I wanted to play. I wanted to come back as soon as I started a little bit of running after I sprained my ankle. But I had a chance. I had a chance and it was tough for me to get over it."

It does seem like Sacramento's people, all over the globe, are still battling the Diesel and Kobe. The Yugos figured to be the U.S. team's toughest challenger, and Turkey, with Turkoglu and Detroit's Mehmet Okur, and ex-Sixer and Knick Mirsad Turkcan, had outside hopes of a medal. But both teams had terrible struggles to reach the quarterfinals. After Yugoslavia lost in the first round to Spain, Divac railed about the poor officiating just as loudly as he did following Game 6 in L.A. There appeared to be trouble between Yugoslav coach Stanislav Pesic and Seattle forward Vladimir Radmonovic, who got so little playing time here that he angrily demanded a ticket to fly home the tournament's first weekend. And Turkey disappointed its loud and substantive crowd with losses to Puerto Rico, Brazil and Spain in preliminary-round play.

But Turkoglu feels that when the NBA season starts, the Kings will bounce back mentally.

	“	We don't have any excuses anymore. Because we know what we have to do. Just beat whoever's going to be in the conference finals, the Lakers or other teams. ”
		— Hedo Turkoglu

"We've got our experience the last couple of years," he said. "Everybody's staying on the team, and Keon Clark came, and it's going to make us stronger. So we just have to keep rolling like we did during the season, and try to get that ring. Because we don't have any excuses anymore. Because we know what we have to do. Just beat whoever's going to be in the conference finals, the Lakers or other teams."

The Kings do seem to have everything in place. They certainly seem, on paper, to be even stronger next season with Bibby under contract, Clark adding to their frontcourt depth for the $4.5 million exception ("Geoff Petrie, he's the best," Divac said) and clear supremacy to the other teams in the West that are trying to knock off the Lakers.

And yet ... Sacramento had the best record in the league last season. The Kings had home-court advantage last season. They had the game to go the Finals in Arco Arena last season. They can't do anything better than that. Except win Game 7.

"I think we're going to be more prepared mentally for that kind of game, if we approach that next year," Stojakovic said. "We're probably going to be ready to help and I think we learned how to finish the games. That was the reason. I think we weren't very ready, very experienced, in that moment of big games."

Basketball's new isle of style
The feel-good story of these championships early on was Puerto Rico. The island nation has had moments of success before in international play, most notably the gold medals at the 1991 and 1994 Goodwill Games and the '91 Pan American Games. Not much was expected out of it this time, though, after it barely qualified with a fourth-place finish in the Tournament of the Americas. But Puerto Rico knocked off Turkey, Spain and Yugoslavia to win its side of the bracket entering quarterfinals play, where it lost to New Zealand and the United States before beating Brazil for seventh place.

The team is a mix of veterans of international play, such as center Jose Ortiz, forward Jerome Mincy and guards Raymond Dalmau and Carmelo Travieso, with younger players such as ex-Suns center Daniel Santiago. In Puerto Rico's 85-83 upset of Yugoslavia last week, Santiago dominated Divac with 31 points and 10 rebounds.

"It's a big, important win for Puerto Rico, especially for our island," forward Larry Ayuso said. "To beat (Yugoslavia) gives us a lot of confidence to go to the other round."

Santiago was a sleeper for the Suns a couple of years ago, but he was tossed around his first season in Phoenix and could never find regular playing time. He tried bulking up last year but that didn't work very well, either, and he played in only three games. He signed a one-year deal with an Italian team in Rome, but medaling here would likely be a bigger accomplishment.

"We came very close in the exhibition games," Santiago said. "Our basketball in Puerto Rico is at a different level now. Internationally, this is the best team I've ever played with ... I think it helps. It helps a lot. The level of talent that are in these tournaments are NBA players now. There's NBA players in Europe and they're coming in and out, and basketball around the world is getting very strong. I feel like games like (the Yugoslavia win) show that you can have the opportunity and the ability to play in the NBA, and that helps you get jobs in the NBA."

Santiago showed what he had learned both here and in Phoenix against Divac, drawing a charging foul late in the game that was a classic Vlade flop.

"He's one of the guys that I looked up to," Santiago said. "Some of the fouls, the charges, he said, 'You learned that one from me, didn't you?' And I said 'Yeah, you're right.' "

David Aldridge is an NBA reporter for ESPN.