That chubby boy is now the most valuable player: who is Nikola Jokic?

In the world's best basketball league, the NBA, two European players shared the MVP award in the last four seasons: Greek Yannis Antetokoumpo and Serbian Nikola Jokic. Actually, the stories of both are interesting.

The number in Nikola Jokic's contract is a figure that even players like LeBron, Curry, Durant, and Harden cannot get. So much so that in 2027-28, the last season of the contract, Jokic will earn about $ 60 million. However, 10 years ago, no one would have guessed that Jokic, a tall but chubby 17-year-old, could even enter the NBA's door, let alone sign the biggest contract. Pushed into the basketball court by his father at the age of 10, Nikola was a boy in the small city of Sombor, Serbia, who, in his own words, “played video games and drank three liters of Coke a day” in his own words.

Who scored these 34 points?

But three people would change the fate of this chubby boy. The first of them is Misko Raznatovic, one of the mightiest basketball managers in Europe, and the others are two coaches Dejan Milojevic and Ognjen Stojakovic. When Jokic was 17, he played for the U18 team of KK Vojvodina Srbijagas club. But he was not even mentioned among Serbia's 10 promising basketball player candidates.

As he told in the documentary "Land of MVPs", Misko Raznatovic was spending the weekend examining basketball news in the sports newspaper 'Sportski Zurnal': “He was a player that caught my attention in a match in the Serbian U18 league. He had 34 points and 19 rebounds. I said I'd look again next week. The player of the month also played with 38 points and 9 rebounds this time. I asked my Scout. He didn't know at all. I immediately told him to follow up to contact his family.”

Then, relying on his feelings, he signed a contract to be the manager of a player he had never watched for the first time in his career and transferred Jokic to Mega Basket, the Serbian team he owned. This was a necessary move for Jokic to show his potential.

Raznatovic was the off-court planner on the journey that took Jokic from the U18 league to the NBA. However, Nikola still had a long way to go on the field. And it was Dejan Milojevic, the coach of the Mega Basket team, who laid the cobblestones of this difficult road.

The draft night went to sleep

Mega was a team of opportunity. But even the first months here were extremely difficult for Jokic. Milojevic, now an assistant coach with the NBA's reigning champion Golden State Warriors, would sum up Jokic's early days years later: "His basketball IQ was great, but he wasn't physically ready." It took a long time for him to completely change his eating habits and get used to the pace of training. The pastry days he loved so much were over. His teammate Dangubic from those years also said that his only constant feature was his work ethic.

Even though he was only 19 and not one of the leaders of his team, even NBA teams discovered his potential. In the summer of 2014, he decided to join the Draft, where NBA teams recruited players from the USA and the rest of the world. He was not expected to be elected in the first place. When the Denver Nuggets picked him in 41st place, it was 5 am in Belgrade and Jokic was sleeping soundly. Years later, in an interview he gave to the official channel of the NBA, he would say, "I never thought I could play in the NBA." He signed his first NBA contract the following summer. He had a good adjustment season and was even picked into the top five of the best rookies.

However, it wasn't easy for Jokic to evolve from a man of duty to an NBA star. Because just at the time he stepped into the NBA, his playing style in the entire league changed, and the era of shooting players had begun under the leadership of Stephen Curry. This is where another citizen, Ognjen Stojakovic, stepped in. Stojakovic went to the USA in 2013 to work as a video coordinator for the Denver Nuggets, after years of youth coaching in his country.

Jokic was also a player on the team when he was promoted to assistant coach three years later. In 2018, he became the director of player development. This was when Jokic adapted his skills to the NBA and took firm steps toward becoming a big star. According to Stojakovic, “He was basically capable of doing anything. But when he got here, he needed time. Step by step, he worked on the whole game.”

Jokic literally stepped up after signing his first major five-year, $148 million contract in the summer of 2018. He took on the on-court lead in Denver. He wanted the ball in critical moments, he used the last shot if necessary. He also showed that a 2.11-meter tall can play another kind of game. Because he enjoyed involving his teammates in the game. When he reflected on his game vision and sensitive hands on it, he became one of the best setters in the entire NBA. According to his current coach, Michael Malone, he is "the best-dedicated center in the world."

How are these salaries paid?

Jokic's five-year, $264 million contract isn't the only one this summer. Bradley Beal's five-year and $251 million contract, Devin Booker's and Karl-Anthony Towns' contracts of 224 million each, and Zach LaVine's $215 million receivables for five years are other examples. So, how is it that NBA teams can promise these numbers to their players?

In the 2021-22 season, the total revenues of the 30 teams in the NBA reached an estimated $ 10 billion. In 2018-19, the last season before the pandemic, this figure was $8.8 billion. Of this, $2.6 billion comes from media rights, $1.5 billion from sponsorships, and the rest from ticket and product sales. In addition, most of these revenues are shared equally among 30 teams. Thanks to these increased revenues, the salary cap per team, that is, the total salary that can be paid to the entire staff in one season was increased to 123.6 million dollars.

Horses and brothers

Nikola Jokic has a modest life outside of basketball. As soon as the season ends, he takes his breath away in the small city of Sombor, where he was born and grew up, and gets the Balkan cuisine that he missed so much. For this reason, the end of summer always returns to Denver with a little extra weight. In Sombor he spends time with his old school friends and horses. He has a barn he built a few years ago and horses that he drives in chariot races.

His family is also very important. His two older brothers, Strahinja and Nemanja, live with him and take care of him. They were on the brink of a fight after he and Markieff Morris threw each other at the Miami Heat game in November last year. Strahinja and Nemanja immediately responded when Morris' older brother sent a threatening tweet against Jokic. For a moment, we thought we were on the verge of a fight between families. Fortunately, the situation subsided.