It’s always interesting to see what athletes do at the moment of greatest triumph. There are the throwers to the ground, the chest drummers, the ones who have to be caught with a lasso – and of course those who climb up somewhere, bathe in the cheers of the fans and pretend with outstretched arms as if something happened to them Transcendent succeeded. Serbian basketball pro Nikola Jokic was Monday night after his Denver Nuggets won the club’s first title: The Consolation.
Jokic did not go to his colleagues. Not to his wife Natalija, with whom he has been in a relationship since school and who is now happily jumping around with the 21-month-old daughter Ognjena in her arms. Not to Brother Strahinja, a one-man force of nature who recently lined up Lakers nobleman Jack Nicholson and is now howling with joy. Not to the Nuggets fans, who neatly escalated after the 94:89 victory in the fifth game of the best-of-seven series. Not to courtside celebrities like singer Ciara, football star Russell Wilson, or South Park inventors Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Jokic went up to each and every final opponent Miami Heat player, shook their hand or hugged them, and said a few soothing words.
After Jokic had received a few nods of thanks from his own team, he was already taken away by PR people. If you win a title in US sports, you’re only allowed to celebrate for a few seconds, then you’re led in front of a camera and you have to explain how it feels. Jokic’s answer contained the word “team” five times in one sentence.
At the end of a season you always check why who won and what that means in a larger context; for players, clubs, leagues and sports. The obvious solution would now be to proclaim Jokic a megastar, who refined his still very young career – he just completed his eighth NBA season – after two individual awards for the most valuable player (2021 & 2022) with the title.
Jokic, the handshaker: After the game, the Nuggets center went to the Heat staff and players and comforted the losers.
(Photo: JUSTIN EDMONDS/Getty Images via AFP)
Who broke Wilt Chamberlain’s 57-year-old record for most triple doubles in these playoffs: ten times he got two-digit values in three statistical categories; he smashed the old record (seven) like otherwise only doped athletes smash records. In game three he managed 30 points, 20 rebounds and ten passes, the first 30-20-10 finals game in NBA history. And he became the first player to average a triple-double in the playoffs and the title.
Jokic often looks like a gambler who could afford to come from the beach to the hall because he is blessed by nature with a height of 2.11 meters, talent for movement and a feel for the ball. But that’s not correct. Like Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali or Roger Federer, Jokic is an example of how much hard work it takes to make the difficult look so easy – and yes, the comparison with the very greatest in sport is deliberate. Jokic is on the way there, definitely.
“He doesn’t just show up and do these things,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said ahead of Monday’s game of the center’s ease of play. How he puts a ball in the basket with feeling. How he finds teammates because he obviously has eyes in the back of his head. How he dupes opponents by pressing the ball in their stomachs when they’re out-of-bounds to secure a throw-in for his team. Malone says, “The amount of time he puts into honing his art doesn’t get enough news to me.” He didn’t say talent, he said art.
Maybe it should be described like this: In an NBA era where rules like salary caps allow the best to move to where they can take an easy route to titles (huh, Kevin Durant) or spend most of their time on extra-sports activities (huh, LeBron James) promise, the Nuggets have achieved a pot and lid situation with Jokic – just like the Dallas Mavericks once did with Dirk Nowitzki. In tranquil Denver, just as Nowitzki once described his situation, he is “not being dragged through the city like a bull by the nose ring.” They have brought people to his side who know that as a team and Individualists benefit from letting Jokic be who he is. Or as he says himself: “I don’t need to score to shape a game.”
This last game of the season was the best example of that. The Nuggets, known for their playful, graceful offense, struggled against the Heat’s street mutt defense; most of the time they were behind. “That’s why basketball is so much fun,” Jokic said afterwards: “You can’t plan everything, sometimes you have to react and show that you can win even if a game doesn’t go as you imagined.” Denver slowly caught up, it was exciting until the end. Jokic’s colleagues like Jamal Murray (14 points in total), Michael Porter (16), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (eleven) and Bruce Brown (ten) scored.
The contribution to Jokic’s success despite fewer points in the end: immeasurable, just because of the presence under the basket – and don’t worry, the statistical values (28 points and 16 rebounds) were still extraordinary.
Just as you could never have imagined with Nowitzki that he would play somewhere else than in Dallas, Jokic should stay in Denver – and that naturally leads to the question: Is there more to come, like with the Showtime Lakers in the 1980s, the 90’s Bulls or the Golden State Warriors last? Jokic is 28, Murray is 26, Porter Jr. 24. The three are tied to the Nuggets until at least 2025, at which point Murray is likely to extend at Denver. So they should stay together, and they could shape this league as a departure from the chest drummers and arm-spreaders of the recent past – along with the Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokuonmpo, who is similarly relaxed about the dazzlers triumph and defeat.
When Jokic was asked directly after the consolation for the defeated, how he feels now, this first NBA title of his life, he only said: “Good, we’ve done our job, now we can finally go home.”