I want to see life the way Nikola Jokic sees a basketball game
My lumbering king
For the past six weeks, I’ve been closely following the Denver Nuggets on their NBA postseason run, which has gone deeper than at any point in franchise history. Yes, I like basketball. And I like sports! And because I lived in Colorado from age 2-15, I’m a fan of all Denver-based professional teams. So when the basketball one from that area makes it to the finals for the first time ever, I very much pay attention and very much hope they win it all.
One thing that’s so exciting about cheering for an outcome that is completely out of your control and doesn’t pan out 99.9 percent of the time is exactly that: we don’t know the result, but the slim possibility of the best one, a championship, feels so (precariously) real. It’s a story of potential glory being written as we speak, where the narrative swings dramatically with every game won or lost, every big play, every mistake and every little adjustment gone right. Professional sports playoffs are live drama on the biggest stage, where the story is often much more interesting than the action itself.
Of course, any great narrative needs great characters, and if you follow basketball, it should come as no surprise that my favorite player/character is Nikola Jokic. If you don’t, I encourage you to keep reading anyway, because this isn’t a trite sports metaphor about drawing on hardcore basketball WORK ETHIC as a way to WIN at life. This is about aspiring to see the world the way a slow, 6’11”, 280-pound Serbian man sees a basketball game.
Jokic, my dear, doughy, 28-year-old basketball savant, is a very good basketball player from Sombor, Serbia that was selected 41st overall in the 2015 draft by the Denver Nuggets. This pick occurred during a Taco Bell commercial on TV, which people like to bring up a lot now that he’s a two-time MVP who has led his team to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. To be fair, it is a great plot point.
Much has been written about the dissonance between what Jokic looks like and what he’s able to accomplish in a sport full of absolute athletic specimens. An article on The Ringer from earlier this week sums it up pretty well from the jump:
“Nikola Jokic—as an idea—has never made much sense. No player who is 7 feet tall should be able to sling passes the way Jokic does, or shoot at the clip he does, or control the game from as many different areas of the floor as he does. And if one could, they surely wouldn’t have been selected in the second round of the draft, with a pick so seemingly inconsequential it was announced during a commercial cutaway for something called a Quesarito.”
See? There it is again: Quesarito. Everyone loves that (barely) Mexican-inspired nugget. But, I digress. The point here is that Jokic has an uncanny feel for the exceptionally difficult challenge of NBA basketball. He passes better than any big man in the history of the game. He’s a rebounding machine. He has a soft shooting touch that he’ll activate to the tune of 50+ points when his team needs it. He’s an offensive magician whose one weak spot—defense—is progressively improving. The guy truly does it all, adapting to whatever the flow of a game presents, making all of his teammates better, while casually sloshing around the court like he’s wearing flip flops. What’s his secret?
Celebrated sports analysis blog The New York Times calls it the art of slowness. ESPN repeatedly quotes his Nuggets teammates as saying it’s “miraculous” and “ridiculous” the way he takes whatever a defense gives him and makes it look so simple. His coach says it’s impossible to keep him down for a whole game. He’s always at least a step ahead of the defense, he’s deeply humble, and he’s somehow managed to find a “healthy obsession” with his craft that allows him to be elite without turning into a total nutjob. I mean, he has a wife and a baby and a very cool horseracing hobby. He’s an exceptional talent, but it doesn’t seem to have come at the expense of a balanced life.
I…want to be that. An exceptional talent, sure, but more importantly a man of balance. One who is selfless, makes people around him better, sets a good example. One who gracefully welcomes whatever challenges cross his path and reacts decisively instead of single-mindedly attempting to control his environment or avoid anything bad in it. One who’s deaf to nonsense and only ever focused on what matters. Maybe it’s zen, maybe it’s calmness, maybe (hopefully) there’s a specific Serbian word for it that I could never fully understand. Whatever it is, Nikola Jokic has it figured out, man. I’d gladly sign up for any cult he leads.
GO NUGGETS.