“That happened for the first and only time in the 27 years of our agency,” Ražnatović told the famous NBA ace in a conversation about Nikola Jokić.
The most famous Serbian basketball agent, Miodrag Miško Raznatovićhe spoke in America about how he discovered Nikola Jokić, his most famous client and how he and his colleagues “smelled” his talent. The curiosity of the story is that he did not see him at all before they established cooperation, which had never happened to him before or after that.
“I was reading the paper and I saw a guy dominating that competition, under 18, which is really low level. He scored 29 points and had 26 rebounds, if I’m not mistaken. I said ‘Wow’ and nothing more than that. Next week, it was Sunday, I was reading the paper again and I thought, ‘Hey, let’s check how he was this round.’ Then I saw that he scored 30 points, with 15 rebounds. That’s not my job, that’s the job of my scouting associates , but I’m curious by nature, so I wanted to check that guy out,” said Jokic in a conversation with former NBA basketball player Matt Barnes.
“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.’ place, found the player’s family and talked to them. That family is a great, very stable, old-fashioned Serbian family, who really take very good care of the children. They were very happy because such a big agency was interested in a kid who, by the way, had never was at the training of the first team. And they accepted to approach the agency, but they wanted to see me,” he added.
“Two days later they came, we talked, a very good chemistry was created. Especially when it came to Strahinja, his older brother, he was there. At that moment he was very important for that decision and for many other decisions. And in He helped Serbia a lot to help him what he is, and it was very difficult. So, Nikola came to the agency at the age of 17 and a half. He is the first and last player in the 27-year history of our agency that no one saw him live.” .
The rest is known – Nikola joined the youth categories of Mega, where he entered the first team under the leadership of Dejan Milojević, became the MVP of the regional competition and moved to the NBA in 2014 after being drafted during the commercial break. And then, year after year, he began to show what kind of talent he is known for, and since he exploded, no one could stop him. The previous two years he was the NBA MVP, and this spring he is fighting for the NBA title for the first time in his career the grand final against Miami.