Basketball legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson is in Montenegro. The five-time NBA champion and Hall of Famer shared photos on his Instagram account showing an evening spent in Porto Montenegro, Tivat’s luxury marina village, where he dined with a familiar face from his basketball world.
“It was so nice to see my friend and former Chicago Bulls player, Dalibor Bagarić, his wife Jasmina, son Peter, and daughter,” Johnson wrote, describing a “beautiful evening highlighted by an amazing dinner and conversation at Gallardo Steakhouse.”
The post, which gathered thousands of likes within hours, shows the group posing in the marina’s promenade area, with Montenegrin flags visible in the background.
Johnson’s traveling party this summer also includes actress Vanessa Bell Calloway, known for her roles in "Coming to America" and "Shameless", and Star Jones, the attorney, television personality and longtime "Divorce Court" judge — both familiar faces from the group of celebrity friends who join Magic and Cookie on their annual Adriatic voyage.
A Regular on Montenegro’s Summer Map
Johnson’s appearance is no accident of geography. The NBA icon has made Montenegro a recurring stop on his famous annual Mediterranean yacht vacation - a six-week summer tradition that has taken him and his wife Cookie, often joined by celebrity friends like Samuel L. Jackson, through the ports of France, Italy, Greece, and the Adriatic.
Montenegro featured on his itinerary in both 2024 and 2025, with the Bay of Kotor serving as one of the route’s most photographed stretches. His chartered superyachts vessels that reportedly cost over a million dollars per week are exactly the kind of visitors Porto Montenegro was designed to welcome, with one of the deepest and best-equipped marinas on the Adriatic.
This year’s return suggests something simple: he likes it here.
Why Porto Montenegro Keeps Drawing Global Names
The Tivat marina village has spent the past decade building a reputation as the Adriatic’s leading luxury yachting destination, combining berths for some of the world’s largest private vessels with five-star hotels, designer shopping, and a growing collection of high-end restaurants.
Johnson joins a long list of global names spotted in the marina and around the bay in recent seasons, as Montenegro’s profile among high-end travelers continues to climb. The country hosted the EU-Western Balkans Summit at Porto Montenegro in June, will stage the World Travel Awards Europe Gala at Kotor Bay in October, and was named one of BBC Travel’s top destinations for 2026.
The Bagarić Connection
Dalibor Bagarić, Johnson’s dinner companion, is a former NBA center who was drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 2000 and spent three seasons with the franchise before continuing his career in Europe. His wife Jasmina is a successful entrepreneur in hospitality and fashion sector. The Croatian big man is part of the extensive Balkan basketball diaspora that has long connected this region to the NBA, a lineage that runs from Dražen Petrović and Vlade Divac to Nikola Jokić and Luka Dončić today.
For basketball fans in Montenegro, a country that has produced its own NBA players, including Nikola Vučević and Nikola Mirotić, the sight of one of the game’s greatest figures relaxing on the local waterfront is a reminder of how small the basketball world really is, and how naturally this corner of the Adriatic fits into it.
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