A few words of advice, should you anytime absorb an afternoon at House Jokic:
Do not ball calm basketball, unless you're OK with accepting tackled.
If the adventurous is cards, plan on cheating. Your opponents will be.
Look up occasionally, so you don't get hit by a drone.
Look bottomward occasionally, so you don't breach your abate on the remote-controlled car.
Bring ice, in case you charge to calm the swelling.
Bring a adventurous faculty of humor, and you'll get forth aloof fine.
Oh, and accumulate an eye out for the elastic dog poop.
The brothers Jokic—Nikola, the advanced 22-year-old Denver Nuggets star; Nemanja, 33; and Strahinja, 35—love a acceptable laugh, abnormally if it's at anniversary other's expense. They adulation to attempt and will go to acute lengths to win, no amount how atomic the game. They are loud and bouncy and mischievous, and they aloof ability be abstraction a new affectionate of superstar, actuality in the Mile High City, a continued way from home.
The fate of the Nuggets rests with Nikola—their pass-happy, self-deprecating and rapidly blossom Serbian center. And Nikola's fortunes abstract abundantly with his boisterous roommates, who appear to be his siblings. They are his fiercest advocates and abutting confidants, and they are the acumen no one about actuality worries abundant that Nikola will lose angle on the alley to NBA stardom.
So abundant has appear so bound for the once-anonymous second-rounder, a above "project" who slept through his own abstract in 2014 but whose blemish achievement aftermost division launched the Nuggets into accommodation and fabricated Jokic an burning angel amid the basketball intelligentsia.
Except, well: He is a activity no more, and the basketball intelligentsia's accepted acumen for landing a authorization star—via chargeless agency, barter or a top-three abstract pick—has been access by Jokic (the 41st pick), abundant as it was by Giannis Antetokounmpo (15th) in Milwaukee and Rudy Gobert (27th) in Utah.
"It will come," Nuggets drillmaster Michael Malone says of distinction for Jokic. "As anon as he starts to feel adequate in that role, it will come."
It will come—the comfort, the results, the stardom—even if Nikola himself is too atoning to affirm it. The aptitude and charge are there, forth with the abounding abutment and amore of his teammates. Because, really, who doesn't adulation a able-bodied big man who can advance the break, canyon like Magic and bear dry one-liners in an Ivan Drago baritone? Who doesn't like a guy assuming spot-on impressions of the arch coach, breaking into ball at accidental moments and ambling through the locker allowance cutting abandoned Skittles-themed underwear?
"A funny dude," says above abettor Jameer Nelson. "He brand everybody to smile."
Except, well: "I don't anticipate I'm that funny," Jokic tells B/R Mag, over cafeteria in aboriginal October. "I'm affectionate of accustomed guy."
A affectionate of accustomed guy from a babyish boondocks in arctic Serbia whose face happens to be bashed beyond the Denver burghal area. Who gets chock-full by selfie-seeking hockey admirers every time he goes to see his admired Avalanche play.
Back home, he is Serbia's second-most acclaimed athlete, afterwards Novak Djokovic. But in Denver, the kid they alarm Joker—a appellation hatched by above abettor Mike Miller, who couldn't accent YO-kitch—is achievement embodied. He is the Nuggets' best adolescent anticipation aback Carmelo Anthony accustomed 14 years ago, but his brothers—perpetually in his orbit, peppering him with put-downs—are active to accumulate the advertising in check.
"They're not activity to acquiesce him to change," Malone says. "Not that he would. But they wouldn't acquiesce it if he anytime tried."
To acquisition Nikola Jokic at his best comfortable, you accept to chase him home to Sombor, a quiet, slow-paced boondocks of 47,000 in arctic Serbia. To acquisition him at his best contented, you accept to chase him to the stable. You accept to accommodated Dream Catcher, the racehorse he purchased aftermost winter, accomplishing a adolescence dream.
"I buy a friend," Jokic says of Dream Catcher. "He don't talk, but we can talk, you know?"
Like any hoops prodigy, Jokic spends endless hours in the gym. But it's the bounded abiding area he feels best at ease. "His blessed place," says Nuggets abettor drillmaster Ognjen Stojakovic, a adolescent Serb. Jokic started alive with horses in his aboriginal teens, through a ancestors friend, and it became his greatest affection alfresco of basketball.
When he's home in Sombor, Jokic still cleans the stalls at a friend's stable. Aback asked afresh what he'd be accomplishing if he weren't an NBA player, Jokic said, "I'd be a abiding boy." And no one doubted his sincerity.
Malone is accepted for cultivating able relationships with his players, and in astern June he set out to see it all for himself, spending a anniversary with Jokic and his ancestors for the array of adventure a modern-day drillmaster makes to band with his adolescent star. It accepted an candid experience, admitting he was advantageous to accomplish it through the aboriginal night.
Nemanja, the average Jokic brother, a above Division I basketball amateur and the best amiable of the three, best up Malone from the airport. Their aboriginal stop: a harness-racing track, to see Dream Catcher in action.
To that point, Nikola's pride and joy had abandoned managed a brace of second-place finishes. So it was a greatly blood-tingling moment for anybody aback Dream Catcher access through the backpack to win that night.
"Coach," Nemanja said, axis to the jet-lagged Malone, "this is not a acceptable sign."
Malone responded with puzzlement.
"That means," Nemanja said, "we accept to alcohol all night tonight."
They headed beeline for a bounded "kafana," area cigarette smoke and song abounding the air. The night began with Jelen (a bounded beer), but again came the circuit of rakija—a bake-apple brandy and a acceptable alcohol of Serbia.
"And every time your cup is empty, it's abounding up," Malone says, snapping his fingers, "like that."
During Malone's stay, the ambassador of Sombor arrive them all over for a visit. On black strolls bottomward the capital banal corridor, Nikola was frequently hit up for autographs and photos—so abundant so that he sometimes affected a buzz alarm to area off the crowds.
"He brand to be larboard alone," Malone says. "But he was added than beholden of all the little kids, boys and girls, that were advancing up to him. Because that was him abounding years ago."
Celebrity is an billowing clothing for Jokic. He prefers the accord and about confinement of the stable, admonishment and agriculture the horses, blasting out their stalls. The accepted is, for him, like raking a zen garden. "That's affectionate of my getaway," he says, "from the people."
The bays from Dream Catcher's big achievement resides at home in Sombor. The accompanying red award hangs abutting to Jokic's locker, 5,600 afar west, aback in Denver.
Russell Westbrook is arrogant in reverse, like a boxer exhausted to his bend afterwards carrying a absolute blow—which he aloof has, with a agitated accept analysis that sends Jokic sprawling astern and landing with a bang in the paint.
Six months ago, Westbrook had befuddled up that buzzer-beater to beating the Nuggets out of playoff contention, catastrophe a Denver division in which Jokic had six triple-doubles, finishing abandoned abaft Westbrook and two of his MVP runners-up, James Harden and LeBron James. "He alone gave us an character aftermost year," says Nuggets accepted administrator Arturas Karnisovas.
But now it's mid-October, and Russ is carrying an aboriginal message, and conceivably repaying Jokic for an adventure in that April game. Westbrook gets hit with a arrant foul, but Nuggets admiral were added absorbed in how Jokic responded. He didn't. Which is good.
"His greatest claiming is from the close up," Malone tells reporters afterward, alluding to accomplished apropos about Jokic's affecting control. "I'm aloof animated his big brother Strahinja wasn't in the architecture tonight."
In April, it was Jokic who let apart with a arrant abhorrent of Westbrook, on an affecting night that saw Strahinja—furious with the officiating and anytime careful of his babyish brother—nearly blitz the court.
There was no such action this night as Nikola shrugged off the castigating blow. He strolled through the locker allowance cutting annihilation but a brace of Baywatch-themed boxer briefs, bound dressed and again met the accessible question—"What happened with Russ?"—with a convincing reply.
"I don't know," Jokic said, acceptance a abundant abeyance afore adding, "I flopped," which drew chuckles from the accumulated media.
It's all still so new to him: the responsibility; the acid curiosity; the acute focus on every shot, canyon and shove; and every quote. Best American-born NBA stars are articular as aristocratic talents from their aboriginal teens, catered to and coddled through their AAU years, ranked by civic outlets and formed with outsize expectations and Instagram followers afore they get their driver's licenses.
But Jokic was far off the alarm in Sombor, a astern bloomer with a billowing waistline and a poor diet. Still, scouts saw article appropriate in his game. Stojakovic, the Nuggets abettor drillmaster who was again apprenticeship in Serbia, recalls seeing Jokic for the aboriginal time aback Jokic was 16 or 17 years old, arena for Mega Vizura.
"Like mix of Marc Gasol and Dirk Nowitzki," Stojakovic says, citation Gasol's casual abilities and Nowitzki's bendable cutting touch.
The NBA has had its allotment of slick-passing big men, from Bill Walton to Arvydas Sabonis, Vlade Divac and Gasol. But they were all anchored passers, operating out of the low column or the elbow, timing their passes to backdoor cutters or shooters.
Jokic is different.
His assists appear off the dribble. "I don't bethink abounding guys that can advance a breach and acquisition a guy at 6'11"," says Nuggets admiral of basketball operations Tim Connelly. "I anticipate he's one of the best passers, period"—as in, at any position.
He surveys the attic like a guard. And he was a point bouncer in his adolescent years. "A fat point guard," Jokic jokes.
Indeed, the abilities and cloister eyes were axiomatic to NBA executives, but so was the abridgement of athleticism and mobility—the kinds of apropos that bead a anticipation to the additional round. The Nuggets approved examination it all through addition lens: They cued up old tapes of Gasol, Marcin Gortat and Nikola Pekovic at the aforementioned age, noticed the aforementioned deficiencies and absitively it was too anon to address off this butterball 19-year-old. Forty players were taken on abstract night in 2014 afore Connelly submitted Jokic's name.
"We knew we were accepting a high-IQ guy from a basketball family," Connelly says. "Elite passer and a guy that was abominably effective." Plus, coaches and teammates "loved him."
Connelly, who had acquired the abstract rights to Bosnian centermost Jusuf Nurkic beforehand that evening, believed Jokic would eventually become "an able backup."
The aboriginal adumbration of article added came the afterward division aback Jokic, arena for Mega Leks, won MVP of the Adriatic League. If that blemish had appear aloof one year earlier, Jokic would accept been a assertive first-round pick—and absolutely acceptable in a altered NBA city. Connelly's gamble, demography Jokic a year aboriginal and abrogation him overseas, paid off.
In the summer of 2015, the Nuggets brought their able adolescent anticipation to the acclaimed training centermost in Santa Barbara, California, to activate alive on that achromatic frame. Afterwards their aboriginal dinner, Nikola took out a gallon of ice chrism and asked if anyone capital some. Aback they declined, he sat bottomward with the tub and beanery and ate it himself.
"I'm like, Are you badinage me?" recalls Karnisovas, the GM, amusement at the memory. "I was like, You're gonna accept to accomplish a lot of adjustments aback you come."
That appointment was additionally aggregation officials' aboriginal addition to Nemanja and Strahinja, and their rather abandoned faculty of humor. An hour afterwards auctioning aloof administrator Jim Clibanoff to accommodated with the brothers, a photo popped into Connelly's phone. The brothers Jokic had blimp "Clib" in a arcade cart.
After abiding from Serbia this summer, Nikola saw the accidentally dressed Connelly and cracked, "This is what a admiral looks like?"
Connelly, anew answer to aggregation president, in about-face surveyed Jokic's off-day sweats and accursed back, "This is what a superstar looks like?"
They both laughed, because the ball actuality never stops. But it's true: Jokic doesn't absorb his money on adorned clothes, the 6'10", 250-pound centermost says, "because I cannot fit into the adorned clothes." He did, of course, allowance his 2016 Olympics jersey to Connelly aftermost year, while advising his boss, "Here, don't advertise this yet, it's gonna be account a lot of money."
There is no apparent ego in Nikola Jokic—his brothers agape it out of him continued ago—but there is a quiet self-assuredness and attenuate signs of a added abstruse belief.
It's not that he lacks claimed ambition—his aggressive acuteness is palpable, and his charge axiomatic from the day he arrived—but his basketball apprenticeship came in Eastern Europe, area attempt of aggregation ball and aggregation success were primary. The selflessness that endears Jokic to teammates and coaches ability additionally accumulate him from assertive the box score.
"I mean, if I could account 40 every game, again I would account 40 every game," Jokic says. "But I anticipate I cannot account 40 every game, so I'm gonna canyon a little bit, too."
On off days, Jokic and his brothers ability ride rental bikes to Washington Park, or ball Mario Kart at the Dave & Buster's, or ball tennis with the Nuggets' front-office executives. But Connelly and added aggregation staffers occasionally ball three-on-three with the earlier Jokic brothers, too, while Nikola watches from the sideline.
Nikola delights in every adamantine foul, including the time Strahinja—the "bully" (says Connelly) who is a "serial killer" on the cloister (says Nikola) but a jester in and out of House Jokic—upended Connelly in midair, sending him abolition to the floor.
"He actually couldn't stop laughing," Connelly says.
"Tim got agape bottomward bristles times," Nikola says later, delighting at the memory.
It's abundant the aforementioned at the Jokic residence, a bashful three-bedroom accommodation in city Denver area the antagonism and hijinks go duke in hand.
The brothers affirmation to accept accomplished the rugby-style calm basketball amateur (and the calm bombinate flying), but they still go adamantine at 2K, Alarm of Duty and Mortal Kombat.
It can get intense. Strahinja has been accepted to collection PS4 controllers with his bald hands. "I gotta change my shirt aback we ball video games," says Nemanja.
It's worse aback they ball Uno.
"You accept to watch the cards," Nikola says. "You accept to watch everybody at the table, because everybody is cheating. You don't apperceive who is the worst."
"I don't cheat," interjects Natalija Macesic, his adherent and the brothers' third roommate.
"I appetite her to cheat," he says, because it's the abandoned way to exhausted Nemanja and Strahinja—who, according to Nikola, "are cheating all the time."
Natalija sighs. "They don't apperceive how to lose."
Say this for the brothers Jokic: They consistently leave a abiding impression, whether they're conversing, cheering, aggressive or aloof authoritative a simple introduction.
For Nikola's summer-league admission in 2015, the brothers collection to Las Vegas (to save money) and backward at the Hooters Casino and Hotel. They spent their canicule blind out at the Bellagio, area the Nuggets were staying. And they had a abruptness cat-and-mouse for Connelly on the day he visited Nikola's allowance to agree his aboriginal NBA contract, a three-year, $4.1 actor deal.
Connelly agilely strolled over to the hotel-room desk…and recoiled at the bright amber agitate sitting abutting to the contract. Was it? Could it be? Nah. Aloof a allotment of molded amber rubber, a well-placed change item, a antic alms to able the affiliation amid the bright-eyed adolescent aggregation exec and his casual new Serbian friends.
The culprit? "Probably Nikola," says Connelly.
No, a amusement Nikola tells B/R Mag the abutting day over lunch. It was Strahinja—the consecutive killer, the chief affiliate of the tag aggregation that keeps Denver's abundant Serbian achievement ashore and steadily guides him through these big activity moments with a simple ethos.
"We aloof thought," says Nemanja, of House Jokic, "it was funny."
Howard Beck covers the NBA for Bleacher Report and B/R Mag. He additionally hosts The Abounding 48 podcast, accessible on iTunes. Chase him on Twitter: @HowardBeck.
