When Nikola Jokić was announced as the 41st pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, the Serbian big man was fast asleep. In fact, if it wasn’t for his older brother Nemanja, Jokić would have slept through the entire draft. Nemanja called Nikola from New York to celebrate the news but as he popped open a bottle of champagne, he was greeted by a groggy younger brother on the other end of the line.
The drafting of Nikola Jokić was received in a similar fashion around the league. Fan interest wanes as the NBA Draft turns to the second round each year, and when Jokić’s name was revealed on the bottom ticker of the screen during a Taco Bell commercial, it’s easy to understand why the league and its fan base wasn’t taken by storm right away.
“It’s such an inexact science,” Nuggets president of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly told the Denver Post when discussing the NBA draft. “Nikola, up to that point, his professional numbers (in Europe) had not been something that would jump off the page, and certainly the body type is one that it’s easy to have questions about.”
However, it wasn’t a sure thing that Jokić would be available for any team in the 2014 draft. Just ten days before the draft, Jokić’s then-agent Misko Raznatovic declared that his client was being pulled from the draft. According to league sources that spoke to Mike Singer of the Denver Post, it took a promise from the Nuggets that they would draft Jokić at pick 41 to get Raznatovic to keep his client in the draft.
“We thought about past drafts of teams that missed on guys like him,” Connelly said on Sports Radio 104.3 The Fan. “Like Marc Gasol wasn’t exactly Adonis (a Greek mythological figure known for his physique) when he was selected in the second round and he turned into a great player. So, all of these things come into play and then you say well, he’s an elite passer, he’s got great feel for the game.”
Jokić’s basketball career has a humble beginning. The 24-year-old big man began playing basketball on a small toy hoop that hung on a door in his family’s house, which housed three brothers, two parents and a grandmother in two bedrooms. As a result of Jokić being the youngest of the brothers, Nemanja and Strahinja (the oldest of the three) would sit down to level the playing field.
Jokić left home to join KK Mega Leks at 16 years old, where he continued to develop his unique game over three years. “He just wanted to have fun,” Nemanja says. He wanted to stand at the high post, ball in his hands, and bend fancy no-look lobs around defenders’ ears. The first time I saw him play, he was throwing these behind-the-back passes that no one else would even try.”
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