By Eurohoops Team/ info@eurohoops.net
NBA’s regular season is ending, and Nikola Jokic is again under the spotlight. For the third straight year, he’s one of the top candidates for the MVP award.
It would be a historic feat for the Joker, winning the MVP would put him alongside legendary Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell as the only players with three straight Most Valuable Players Awards. Still, he doesn’t think about it.
“It’s enough, I can’t, really. Third year… I don’t really think about it,” he said. “I play one game at a time, and that’s it. If it’s going to be, it’s going to be. Whoever wins will deserve to win, that’s how it will be for sure,” Jokic said to Glas Amerike.
With the FIBA World Cup 2023 coming up next summer, the question remains, will Nikola Jokic again be at the disposal of the Serbian national team head coach Svetislav Pesic?
“What matters is that we qualified, that’s the most important thing. We’ll see about the outcome. It’s still far away, and I don’t think about it yet, like every year before. It’s the decision I’m going to make in the summer.”
Led by Jokic, Denver Nuggets are top of the Western Conference with three victories in front of the Memphis Grizzlies as the regular season enters the last nine games. They are officially qualified for the playoffs, but Jokic doesn’t think further than the first round.
“I don’t know, my expectation is that we pass the first round, and then we’ll see. Since we can win in the first round, I don’t even know who we’re going to face right now. Whether it’s Golden State or Minnesota, or the Lakers, Oklahoma, or Utah, I don’t really know, but I think when we look at the record with them this year, it’s not very fabulous, so… we’ll see.”