The celebrity cameo on the early-morning bus didn’t get any less surprising after the first time. In fact, it became even more so, once Christian Braun realized it was a trend and not a one-time occurrence.
Optional shootarounds are only optional for a select few. “It’s always mandatory for the first-, second-, third-year guys,” Braun said. “Guys that don’t play as much.” Starters are off the hook if they choose to prioritize rest and recovery. When the Nuggets are on the road, there’s often an 8 a.m. bus to the gym for these informal opportunities to get extra shots up.
This is Braun’s second season in the NBA. That bus is for him. It’s not for Nikola Jokic.
“I would say he’s probably the most frequent (starter) that’s on that bus,” Braun told The Denver Post. “And there’s other guys that do that, too. … But Nikola, you don’t see the MVP of the league on an optional shooting bus at 8 a.m. It surprises you every time because the game before, he probably had a 30-point triple-double.”
Why is the center’s attendance record so pristine when it doesn’t need to be? Jokic doesn’t say much on the bus. Maybe, Braun wonders, there’s some minutiae not discernible to the naked eye that bothers him, that he wants to clean up between games. Maybe he’s just imagining a flaw that doesn’t actually exist to keep himself motivated.
Or maybe Jokic just relishes having a basketball in his hands. Maybe it’s for the love of the game.
The Denver Nuggets’ soft-spoken Serbian center is on the cusp of his third MVP, an enshrinement the NBA typically hands out in early May and that Jokic famously recoils from despite its prestige. He will be the ninth player in league history to win the prize three times.
When he was asked about the 2023-24 race against Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander late in the regular season, he sarcastically applauded local reporters for not asking about it sooner. Then he reiterated his past stance: “I think the whole MVP conversation is getting out of control.”
Don’t mistake that for ambivalence toward his profession as a whole. As Jokic’s star has grown the last four seasons, first with MVPs and then a championship, so grew the public perception that he doesn’t care much for basketball.
Part of it is his own doing. The notion reached maximum exposure last June. While confetti rained in Ball Arena, a stoic Jokic said to the TV cameras and the world, “The job is done. We can go home now” — only to be informed later that night that he wasn’t in the clear quite yet. He groaned upon realizing Denver’s parade would keep him in town a few days longer. The networks ran with it.
It’s possible that impression, like the annual MVP debate, has gotten out of hand. Nuggets teammates are adamant it’s nonsense. “Nah, I’m gonna perpetuate that,” Aaron Gordon said sarcastically. “He don’t give a (crap).”
One thing is certain: For a player who sometimes presents himself as indifferent, all other evidence suggests otherwise.
“If you really want to see Jokic, you want to see how special he is, you want to understand the passion that he has for the game, the joy that he has for the game — put the TV on mute,” Reggie Jackson said. “Just put your TV on mute and watch, and then you’ll see.”
For a more nuanced grasp of Jokic’s relationship to basketball, it helps to understand the fundamental differences between American workaholism and European work-life balance. When Jokic was a rising draft prospect with the Serbian club Mega Vizura, “I don’t think he was watching basketball as much,” said longtime friend Nenad Miljenovic, who played point guard for Mega. “I don’t think he was, like, a basketball fan.”
But he was fascinated by it. Mega’s system was particularly friendly toward experimental young players. Jokic wasn’t recognized yet as being good enough to play point center, but whenever the ball went through him, he tried moves that startled even his older teammates.
“He was trying some up-and-unders. Turnarounds and floaters. Not like today, because today it looks so much more automatic, in terms of the move,” Miljenovic said. “At that time, he was searching for himself on the court, and it looked very unorthodox. Sometimes he goes through with this zigzag up-and-under against a player that’s Euro League level, and you’re like, ‘Man, we’ve never seen anybody do that to that player.’ Nobody even tried.”
The mystery was how Jokic even conjured those tricks without watching large samples of basketball and finding favorite players to steal moves from. “I think it’s just talent,” Miljenovic said. Jokic was naturally imaginative, without needing a specific example to follow. He didn’t need to be a consumer of the sport to be enamored by it.
Like his teammates, he would sometimes stay after practice. He continued his experiments. “Trying some crazy shots and just having fun with the ball,” his friend remembers. “Not really working on the game, but you could see he wanted to be with the ball. You could feel the love, for sure.”
The contradiction between Jokic’s skill and his physical shortcomings back then is well-documented. After the Nuggets drafted him, he prioritized getting in shape. “I think his perspective probably changed most when he got to the States,” Miljenovic said. “Because up until then, talent was enough.”
Jokic saw basketball as a job in Serbia and realized he needed to adapt to the American ideology about it being a lifestyle once he was exposed to the rigors of the NBA, and the dedication of other star players. Succeeding in the U.S. required not just getting in shape, but staying in shape. It also demanded more studious tendencies. It’s almost impossible to be an NBA All-Star, much less an MVP, without being obsessed with the game.
And once those accolades begin piling up, being outspoken becomes more weighty. More stressful. Jokic’s words gained power and scrutiny over time. He and Miljenovic weren’t in close contact for a couple of years, but now they talk frequently. The most common topic of conversation? The NBA.
“I think sometimes because he’s such a staple in worldwide basketball and he’s so influential in worldwide basketball, for him to always give his opinion on things — and English is his second language — is something where I think he’s sometimes reserved,” Nuggets wing Peyton Watson told The Post. “Because he’ll talk basketball to us. But he’s not so outward with what he thinks.”
Young players in Denver idolize Jokic — the mental and physical discipline he’s learned to harness. Watson started accompanying him in his postgame weight-lifting routine this season, wanting to get to know Jokic better and learn from him. Gordon, who’s as athletic as any individual in the NBA, is in awe of Jokic’s conditioning, enough to relent on his sarcastic stance. “His discipline, his focus, his level of commitment to the game of basketball and to his body is second to none,” Gordon said. “I don’t think there’s anybody that works harder than he does.”
The enthusiasm reveals itself in flashes. Back at Nuggets training camp in October, Jokic admitted that he occasionally looks up coaching seminars by prominent Serbian basketball minds, such as Zeljko Obradovic, Dusan Alimpijevic and Igor Kokoskov. “I think if you want to be good, you need to be a fanatic in basketball,” he said at the time. During the heat of March Madness, his eyes lit up as he shared admiration for North Carolina State center DJ Burns’ bag of left-handed tricks.
Then the moment is gone, and Jokic will return to his usual bored, droll tenor.
“Nobody goes out there and continually has that much success without caring,” Watson said. “I think that it’s asinine to think that he’s going out there and just doing this by luck. That he woke up and he’s the best player in the world. He works more than anybody. It’s ridiculous to ever say that he don’t touch a ball for the whole summer, and he doesn’t care about basketball. He doesn’t care about the attention that comes with basketball. He cares about basketball more than anything. He’s in America playing basketball for a living. … This is overseas for him.”
When Braun arrived in Denver as a rookie, his assigned player development coach was the same as Jokic’s: Ognjen “Ogi” Stojakovic, who is Serbian. Braun was eager to hear Jokic’s advice, to follow his lead.
He had to come to terms with a new sensibility.
“They teach basketball a little different. They’re both Serbian. They practice perfect reps,” Braun said. “I think that’s why you see that Nikola doesn’t really see anybody in front of him. He shoots the ball high every time. And that way, in a game, it doesn’t matter who’s in front of you. You shoot it high in practice anyway. We never learned that growing up. … Doesn’t matter if it’s Rudy Gobert, doesn’t matter if it’s a 7-footer. Wemby.
“That’s why you see him, every time Wemby can’t block it, it’s just because it’s over the top. He practices the same way every time. He wants perfect reps. They don’t do a lot of reps. But they do perfect reps. In the U.S., a lot of it’s like, ‘Let’s shoot 2,000 shots.’ And over there, it’s like, ‘Let’s shoot 200 shots, but 200 perfect shots.’”
Quantity is effective but a little showy, Braun learned. Quality is quieter but more valuable.
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