By Stefan Djordjevic/ info@eurohoops.net
The Basketball Without Borders (BWB) camp has been organized in Belgrade for the first time and many Serbian basketball stars and legends have joined. One of them is certainly young Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic who admits he wasn’t even thinking about basketball that early, let alone the NBA:
“I wasn’t even interested that much in basketball. I didn’t burden myself with that. As far as these guys go, a lot of them will probably play in the NBA. But I’m a wrong example. I used to cry when going to practices and my father had to keep convincing me.”, Jokic told the press during the BWB, per Basketballsphere.
Jokic is aware that with five Serbian players (the Clippers – Teodosic, Marjanovic; the Kings – Bogdanovic, Bjelica) all in the NBA Western Conference, Serbian fans won’t get much sleep. Especially his father: “My dad will suffer the most. He watches my every game. I tell him, if you played something and I had to get up in three in the morning, I wouldn’t get up. I guess that’s the parental love.”
He also confirmed that the season preps have been underway for a while: “Two months. I’m getting into it slowly. How much you do now, that’s how much you will last in the season. I’m preparing in Sombor (Jokic’s hometown in Serbia). I come to Belgrade just for events like this and visa”
As far as him joining the Serbian national team in September World Cup Qualifiers is concerned, the big man didn’t want to share: “I wouldn’t talk about that. Next question.”