Nikola Jokić wrote the history of world basketball and already at the age of 28 achieved what no one could even think of, let alone predict. He followed his own path and created a miracle. Read nine things about this miracle.
Nikola Jokic is preparing to win the title with Denver and realize the dream that he and his team could only dream of until the tall Somborac left for America in 2014 with a Coca-Cola in his hand. From then until now, Joker has made a leap that few in basketball have been able to make and has taken the Nuggets to a place they have never been since they were founded in 1967, to the grand finals. Given that Nikola has been the best basketball player in the world for years and that we probably think we know everything about him, it is interesting to recall a few facts about our ace that you may have never heard, and perhaps you have forgotten in the meantime, while clips of his moves that take your breath away.
– Jokić was given the nickname “Joker” by former teammate Mike Miller, who could not pronounce “Jokić”. The two played together in the 2015/16 season, and the American was immediately delighted by what he saw. “The way he played basketball was such that it looked like he was joking,” explained Miller and briefly recounted why he was the “Joker”. He helped Nikola as a veteran and Somborac never forgot that
– Jokić loves to watch the series “Friends”. “Yes, I watch it all the time and I try to talk about it with the guys from the team. They laugh at me. I know it ended a long time ago. Now I’m on the seventh or eighth season,” Nikola said in an interview in 2017. In the meantime, he must have finished or started watching, but we guess he still enjoys Joey, Rachel and the crew.
– “Jokic’s turn? Play ads!” The whole world already knows that America watched a commercial for “Tako Bel” instead of Nikola’s video during the 2014 NBA draft broadcast. Who could have guessed that the 41st “pick” would become the best and most dominant basketball player in the world? After all, only this spring we saw for the first time what the video looks like where Jokić’s name is actually heard in the draft.
– Coca-Cola, Nikola’s longtime love. He drank three liters a day, he also drank on the plane, on the way to America when he was moving from Belgrade to Denver. And then he kissed her for the last time. “I drank three liters a day. I haven’t drunk it in the last year and a half, since I came to the NBA. On the flight to Denver, I drank the last one ever!”, Jokić admitted in an interview.
– Natalija and Ognjena – Jokić’s “fortress”. In 2020, Nikola got married to his longtime girlfriend Natalija, with whom he had been in a relationship since his teenage days. After seven years of dating, Natalija Maćešić became Natalija Jokić, a their love story is really wonderful.
– How did Mishko discover it? In newspapers! Ražnatović recently revealed in detail how he realized that a special basketball player was growing up in Sombor by reading the “Sports Journal”. He admitted that he signed it, a that he never saw him in action. “I called my scout and asked about him. And there was silence, we didn’t know about him, which amazed me and was the surprise of the year for me, considering he knows all the 10-year-old kids. So I said this: ‘ Obviously he’s a center, he’s got 26 rebounds, let’s make a phone call and see if that guy’s rebounding because he’s older, stronger, and he’s playing against kids.’ He called me after three minutes and said, ‘No, no, he he’s not strong, he’s very versatile, he’s even a bit overweight, but he’s talented’. I’m a guy who believes in the system, in forecasts, in analysis and I don’t know why I said ‘I want to sign this player’.
– He will come home! Where they didn’t sleep on the night between Monday and Tuesday because of Jokić, Nikola plans to return. “When I finish my career, I will go back there. It’s an extremely ‘slow’ place, not mongo things happen, but you have everything. You have the canal, nature, you can find peace outside the city. I like to be somewhere where I can drive a car without navigation . As they say, there is no place like home”. Read what they are in Nikola’s home they said about Jokić before the match Denver – Miami.
– Nikola’s brothers – fear and trembling in the NBA league. Many are afraid of Strahinja and Nemanja, because they follow every match of Nikola’s heart and are always protective of their younger brother. Get to know Jokić’s brothers better.
– Who would have guessed? When Nikola Jokić as a kid posed in a Denver Nuggets sweatshirt and with a tennis racket in his hand, surely few could have guessed that this very kid from the picture would one day lead the Nuggets where they had never been and become the greatest basketball player in the world . And as things stand, he is treading firmly on a path that only a few players followed, like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan… Get used to being in the company of this buck from Mishko’s picture.
“The story of a destiny written in the stars. Nikola Jokić. Sombor. Serbia, some time in 2000, a five-year-old in a sweatshirt of the Denver Nuggets, the team for which, 22 years later, he would sign the biggest contract in the history of world basketball, to this day. The chances that the boy from Sombor at all gets a sweatshirt from a little-known team from America back in the 2000s. The chances that someone in Sombor heard of (or cheered for) the Nuggets were even less. But the chances that a boy who didn’t even show any love for basketball back then, playing for that club to win two consecutive MVP titles in the strongest league in the world and sign a super max contract were equal to zero. Then again, everything happened just like that. People who write the pages of history, create their own destinies, make the impossible possible, primarily because they ready to work harder and harder than others, to be maximally focused on the goal in front of them, to have faith in themselves and…recognize the signs on the road, which in some way was still written in the stars for them”, Miško wrote with this photo last summer.