By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
At just 18 years of age, Nikola Topic won the ABA League Top Prospect award and was honored with a place in the Ideal Starting Five after playing for Mega MIS and Crvena Zvezda Meridainbet this season.
Before that, he dominated at the youth level, winning the 2023 European championship with the Serbian national team and the MVP award. He was also an MVP of the ANGT Qualifiers in Belgrade and dominated the second part of the 2022/23 season in the Serbian championship with OKK Belgrade.
Besides many accolades, the talented Serbian, who is projected to be among the top picks at the upcoming 2024 NBA Draft, shared the locker room and the court with European stars like Facundo Campazzo, Luca Vildoza, and this season – Milos Teodosic.
“It is needless for me to talk about what kind of talent we are talking about… I am glad to see his great dedication to basketball and his abnormal seriousness, which he has even more than necessary for his age. A bright future lies ahead for Topic. I am sure he will make the most of the opportunities that come his way. With his mindset and way of thinking – I really don’t worry,” Milos Teodosic said about Topic to Meridian Sport.
The legendary Serbian point guard sees him as a leader of the Serbian national team in the future.
“Now we have Vasilije Micic, who is playing great, and Nikola, who is very young. With Vasa and Bogdan Bogdanovic, he can learn a lot. He is certainly someone who, in perspective, should lead the national team. I know his great desire to play for the national team, and I have no doubt that he is our future for the next 15 years.”
He also had a chance to work with a decorated and experienced head coach, Dusko Ivanovic, at Crvena Zvezda.
“When Dusko came, he had complaints about Topic’s body fat percentage. Since I knew all the data, I told Dusko that Nikola doesn’t have a problem with the percentage of fat; it just looks that way because he is muscular. Dusko persisted and demanded measurement. I told him the number, but he didn’t believe it and asked for another measurement. The next morning, the device showed even less than what I said. I bring him the paper with the results; Dusko laughs and says: Impossible, but okay…” Crvena Zvezda’s sports director Milan Dozet said to Meridian sport.
He continued explaining that Topic is also a physical specimen besides having many basketball qualities.
“After that, he made an excuse that Nikola must improve his jump. Why? I immediately ask Dusko and laugh again because I know the results of the jump, speed endurance, sprints, changes of direction… And I know that in the year with older players in the younger selections, he had the best results after Lazar Đoković. I explained to him that Nikola shoots like that, but otherwise, he can jump and dunk over players. At that moment, little Top talks to the assistant coach under the basket, and I tell him: Tope, come dunk. And Topic dunks with two hands without dragging his feet under the basket. Dusko shakes his head… Another thing checked! He does a lot thanks to an extraordinary head, but he is also a quite physically dominant player.”
Stefan Markovic, another point guard with vast experience at the top of European basketball, was among Nikola’s mentors.
“He had a great influence on Topic. For the first time since I’ve been at Zvezda last year, the whole first team came to watch a junior game. Because of Nikola, they came to the final of the ANGT tournament after he had trained with them. Without anyone calling them, they showed up at the game and thus showed their attitude towards Topic, as well as his towards them. They clicked so fast.”
Campazzo and Vildoza were impressed with what they saw, and they had a chance to work with him when he was 17 years old.
“Campazzo and Vildoza told me they had never seen such a mature person with so few years. He is really a stable child, but he is not a child. Although the years say differently, I never met him as a child. He is a grown-up, formed man.”
Crvena Zvezda’s head coach, Giannis Sfairopoulos, wanted him back from the loan at Mega, and by the end of 2023, Topic rejoined the club. Unfortunately, injury prevented him from leaving a bigger mark, but his return had an immediate effect.
“I will quote Giannis Sfairopoulos. Topic raised the level of training by 30 percent. He sped up the team so much and gave life and energy. He didn’t come alone; three foreigners arrived, and I can’t say that anyone brought a fraction of the energy that Nikola brought to the team.”
Dozet also spoke about interest from the NBA.
“Many NBA scouts came to watch him before the draft, and now, when we played in Podgorica against the SC Derby, one general manager approached me—intentionally, I won’t say which team—and said that it is scary to him that no one who knows Topic has said a single bad word. He asked me to say something bad about him. I told him, and I really think so—that Nikola Topic is far worse a player than he is a person.”
The projections vary, but how high can Nikola Topic go at the 2024 NBA draft?
“I won’t say who it is, but one assistant general manager said that Topic is his first pick. It is very possible that if they are the first to pick, they will choose Topic,” Crvena Zvezda’s sports director Milan Dozet concluded.
Topic played just two games for Crvena Zvezda in the ABA League this season, but he has recovered from injury and is back in action after a couple of months. In his 15 appearances for Mega and his current club, the talented Serbian averaged 17.2 points, 6.4 assists, and 3.5 rebounds for an average PIR of 18.7. Not a bad stat line for an 18-year-old player.