Clad in a black tank top and yellow Muhammad Ali shorts, Nikola Jokic plopped in front of a makeshift Finals backdrop on Saturday afternoon and parried questions he’d heard dozens of times before.
As the Nuggets waited to find out which team they’d be wrestling for an NBA championship, Jokic was at ease and in control. He was funny, goofy and engaging — three telltale signs that the cornerstone of the franchise was in a good headspace with history on deck.
His mood was apparent from the outset when Jokic asked for a box score, picking up on a running joke between him and various Nuggets staffers. Still with five days to go until Game 1 of the NBA Finals, there was little else to do but mess around and tease everyone in his orbit.
For the media’s sake and the hordes of cameras that had convened, he did indulge in a bit of reflection.
When Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon stuffed LeBron James on the final play of Monday’s clinching Game 4, Jokic admitted it wasn’t the feeling he expected.
“The win was nice,” he said. “Like half an hour after that, it was just OK. It’s a win. I thought it’s gonna be much bigger feeling, to be honest.”
Maybe Jokic expended too much energy in engineering a 30-point, 14-rebound, 13-assist performance in 45 minutes’ worth of work, or perhaps he’d already unleashed all the emotion he was going to show when he roared in the wake of Gordon’s dunk with 3:34 remaining in the fourth. Like the rest of us, he could’ve still been trying to wrap his head around the preposterous slingshot 3-pointer he made over Anthony Davis less than a minute later.
But aside from a few tender moments with his immediate family after the game, Jokic wasn’t too impressed with the history he and these Nuggets had already made.
And why not?
“That’s a good question,” said Jokic, pondering the inquiry like some philosopher.
“Yes, yes, yes, nice, we made history, this and that,” he said. “At the end of the day, next year nobody’s gonna remember us or two years from now. Maybe if we win it all, maybe it’s gonna be different.”
Even though Jokic was the biggest reason this version of the Nuggets blasted through the Lakers for the first time in their postseason history and notched their first-ever trip to the Finals, it’s fair to infer the big Serbian wasn’t close to satisfied.
There are four more wins to chase, at which point Jokic might finally acknowledge that the years he’s poured into both basketball and his body might mean something to him. Or not, which is always a possibility for the Joker.
Did he watch Game 5 of Boston vs. Miami?
No, he was on a walk with his daughter.
“I’m lying, I watched the first quarter,” he said.
And Game 6? There’s a chance he’d watch it Saturday night with family.
“Or not,” he said.
Asked whether becoming a father at the start of last season could have any impact on how he plays the game, Jokic let out a hilarious and dismissive, “Nah.”
It’s precisely that, though, which has kept him grounded and humble. Between his daughter who can’t help but make the bad days good or his two brothers who are more inclined to terrorize him than compliment him, Jokic’s support system is impenetrable.
“Basketball is not main thing in my life and probably never gonna be,” Jokic said. “To be honest, I like it.”
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