from www.probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com – Not exactly sure how a professional basketball player sleeping with a prostitute got to be news — you don’t even want to know how often that happens — but here you go.

Former Chicago Bull and Croatian basketball legend Toni Kukoc’s name was tied as a “john” to a big prostitution ring in his native country. The scandal apparently reaches all levels of Croatian society — sort of their Heidi Fleiss — where models and young starlets were pimped out at high prices.

One lady named Kukoc as a client, so the Croatian Times called the biggest basketball star in his nation’s history to ask him about it. I don’t totally get his comment, but I think the bottom line is he doesn’t care.

“I was in worse situations in life. What should I do? Return home to Split? Of course I will stay in Osijek,” Kukoc told the media after his name emerged in connection with the elite prostitution ring headed by Nebojsa Perunovic Pance who was arrested last week.

Kukoc has been in worse situations. He went through the bloody and ugly civil war of the former Yugoslavia, when Croatia became a country, and the struggles that followed. Plus, he had to practice against Michael Jordan, who was not happy he was on the team. So you think a little prostitution scandal is going to scare him?

Kukoc got three championship rings, made about $61 million in the NBA and now just golfs and does charity work. If I were in his shoes, I’d shrug too.