How Nikola Jokic became the best basketball player in the world

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Nikola Jokic’s hard journey to becoming the best basketball player in the world fully paid off.

Putting a label on Nikola Jokic’s game has long been a nearly impossible challenge for evaluators. Jokic himself might be the only person to effectively do it. As he was leaving home in the northern part of Serbia to enter the 2014 NBA Draft, Jokic told teams exactly who he was: a “fat point guard.”

Jokic showed up to his first pro gig at Mega Vizura weighing 300 lbs. He was drinking three liters of soda per day, eating “cheese pies” for breakfast, and he couldn’t do one push-up. Basketball players are supposed to be long, lean, and fast, with springs in their legs. Jokic was chubby, slow, and gravity-bound. The Denver Nuggets were intrigued by what they saw on tape, if not entirely sold. When Jokic’s advisor put out a tweet saying his client would pull out of the draft and return to Vizura, the Nuggets made the greatest second round promise in league history to ensure he didn’t file the paperwork.

Pre-draft scouting reports compared Jokic to Pero Antic. Denver did not exactly see him as their center of the future. The Nuggets had two first round picks that year after pulling off a trade with the Chicago Bulls, and they used the first one to draft a different international big man in Jusuf Nurkic. The second round of the draft is hardly ever a spot to find a quality starter, let alone a superstar. When Denver finally came on the clock in round two, their selection of Jokic was announced during a Taco Bell commercial.

Eight seasons later, Jokic stands alone on the NBA mountaintop. The Denver Nuggets’ 2023 championship was a true team effort, but Jokic was the singular force of nature who made it possible. He still looks nothing like traditional superstar, but his skill set is both more completed and more calibrated for this era of the sport than any player of his generation.

Jokic is arguably the biggest and strongest player in the NBA — no one in the league is listed heavier than his 284 pounds. Calling him the best passing big man of all-time is selling him a bit short: he’s one of the best passers ever, regardless of position. All the attention on Jokic’s playmaking sometimes threatens to take away from the other parts of his game. He’s one of the league’s best rebounders. He just shot 46.1 percent from three throughout the Nuggets’ run in the 2023 playoffs. He’s a skilled ball handler in the open floor, a deft scorer in the post, and he has a sixth sense for seeing how a play will develop before it actually happens.

What is Nikola Jokic? He’s a little Shaq, a little Dirk, a little Magic, a little Arvydas Sabonis. Put more simply, he’s the best basketball player in the world.

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Jokic never planned on coming over to the NBA right after he was drafted. Instead, he returned to his club in Belgrade and went from a talented teenager to one of the best players in Europe. Jokic was named MVP of the Adriatic League at 19 years old, igniting hope that Denver might have found a steal with their draft-and-stash.

Jokic came stateside the next year to a Nuggets team in transition. Denver had successfully worked its way out of the blockbuster Carmelo Anthony trade to start the decade, but the group that had won 57 games a few years earlier was a shell of itself after Andre Iguodala left for the Warriors and head coach George Karl was fired. The Nuggets were content on building through the draft. Emmanuel Mudiay was supposed to be their next franchise star as their lottery pick in the 2015 draft, and Nurkic was supposed to be their big man of the future.

Jokic changed all that. With Nurkic out recovering from a torn left patellar tendon, Jokic started 55 games and impressed enough to finish third in Rookie of the Year voting behind Karl-Anthony Towns and Kristaps Porzingis. The Nuggets won only 33 games, and used their No. 7 overall pick in the draft — acquired in a pick swap from the Anthony trade with the Knicks — to draft another guard, Kentucky’s Jamal Murray.

The NBA was getting smaller, faster, and more skilled, yet the Nuggets were trying to build around two centers. Denver began the next season with both Jokic and Nurkic in the starting lineup. After a 3-5 start, Jokic went into Mike Malone’s office and told him he would come off the bench. Denver kept losing with Nurkic as the starter. Eventually, Malone made his choice: the Nuggets would start Jokic as their lone big, and build the team around his odd-ball skills. Nurkic responded by requesting a trade, eventually being dealt to Portland.

It took some time for the Nuggets to figure out the roster. With Jokic as their supersized point guard, Denver needed players who could cut, shoot, and defend around him. Murray was a natural fit. Mudiay and Kenneth Faried weren’t. The team was starting to build an elite offense with Jokic as their centerpiece, but the defense was struggling. The team signed Paul Millsap to a three-year, $90 million deal to give their young star help on the interior defensively. The Nuggets won 46 games in their first year with Millsap, but failed to make the playoffs when they lost to Jimmy Butler and Minnesota Timberwolves on the last day of the season for the No. 8 seed.

The Nuggets were more experienced and more confident the next year. They won 54 games in 2019, winning a Game 7 in the first round against the San Antonio Spurs, and losing a Game 7 in the second round to the Portland Trail Blazers. Jokic was brilliant, earning First-Team All-NBA honors.

The pandemic interrupted the next season, but Denver showed the league what they could be inside the bubble. The Nuggets erased a 3-1 deficit in the first round of the playoffs to beat the Utah Jazz. Then they erased a 3-1 deficit in the second round of the playoffs to beat the Clippers. Jokic and the Nuggets lost to the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in the conference finals, but the groundwork had been laid. The Nuggets just needed to fine-tune their process, starting with Jokic.

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Jokic still didn’t have any muscle definition the naked eye could see, but the years long process of changing his diet and getting his body in better shape was paying off. Jokic was playing with more pace on offense, and turning into a solid team defender who was always in the right place.

Jokic’s all-around game was positioning him as an MVP candidate. Murray had taken his reputation to the next level with an incredible run inside the bubble. Denver knew it needed more athleticism and more defense around their stars. At the trade deadline, the Nuggets swung a deal with the Orlando Magic to land Aaron Gordon.

Denver looked like championship material for those first few games with Gordon in the lineup. Then Murray tore his ACL, and suddenly Denver could do nothing but sit back and wait.

Jokic won MVP in 2021 and 2022, but the Nuggets only had one playoff series win to show for it. The team simply never had a chance without Murray as the dynamic shot-creator and shot-maker they needed paired with Jokic in the backcourt. Denver could have made a panic move, but instead they stayed the course and fleshed out the roster slow and steady. The team added more defense by trading long-time stalwarts Monte Morris and Will Barton for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. They struck gold with a bargain free agent signing in Bruce Brown.

The Nuggets were the best team in the West all season as Murray returned to the lineup, but doubts persisted — especially as the team took its foot off the gas after the All-Star break. The second half ‘swoon’ cost Jokic the chance to be the league’s first three-peat MVP winner since Larry Bird, but individual awards weren’t never important to him. Instead, the Nuggets were playing the long game, and the only prize that mattered was the championship.

From the moment the playoffs opened, the Nuggets looked like the best team in the field. Their post-All-Star slide was more of a feature than a bug: the team was well-rested and ready to roll through opponents in the postseason.

As Jokic and the Nuggets made their run to the Finals, his dominance was finally appreciated in full. Critics had no leg to stand on as the legends of the sport praised Jokic at every turn.

“Jokic is an all-time great,” Kevin Durant said after Jokic averaged 34.5 points, 13.2 rebounds and 10.3 assists to eliminate the Phoenix Suns. “Going to go down as one of the all-time great centers to ever touch a basketball.”

“I know how great he is,” LeBron James said of Jokic after the Nuggets swept the Lakers in the conference finals.

The Miami Heat never had a solution for their Jokic problem in the championship series. He posted triple-doubles in victories in Game 1 and Game 3. He empowered his teammates to take and make big shots, with a different hero emerging among Denver’s role players every night. Jokic was the constant: scoring inside, splashing threes, hitting teammates for open looks, and perhaps most consequentially, holding his own on defense at the rim.

The Nuggets secured their first championship in franchise history with a Game 5 win on Monday night. All Jokic did was become the first player to lead the playoffs in points (600), rebounds (269), and assists (190) in league history.

When it was over, Jokic looked more relieved than enthused. “The job is done,” he told ABC. “We can go home now.”

The young player who once called himself a “fat point guard” still had that deadpan sense of humor. More than anything, Jokic’s reaction cemented that none of this came easy. Horse racing is Jokic’s passion. Basketball is work.

It was hard work to stop drinking all that soda. It was hard work to make his body strong enough for push-ups, let alone to withstand the physicality of an NBA playoff run. He didn’t put in all that work for individual accolades. As he stood in the corner as his teammates celebrated in the locker room, Jokic could take comfort that all of his hard work was for them.

Jokic is a rare superstar for a thousand different reasons. He’s the second round pick who turned into an MVP, the “soft” Euro who bucked every stereotype, the slow-footed center who dominated the pace-and-space era. Beyond all of that, Jokic stands out for how complete his game is. Just about his only hole is his inability to jump over a ruler. Jokic showed how unimportant that really is on this run.

No one can ever question Nikola Jokic again. In this moment, he’s nothing less than the best in the world.