How Nikola Jokić Is Changing the Game of Basketball

In basketball’s garden of aesthetic delights, few are more cherished than the sweet-passing big man. 

We see the big man as non-athlete, in a way ​​— a big, lumbering wall meant for devouring rebounds, setting bone-crushing screens and throwing down dunks over smaller, weaker players. “Get down there and dominate, big man!” cries the world basketball-watching population from their little couches, demanding dominance from a giant and unleashing hell whenever one doesn’t abide. The big man is the rarest of all commodities on a basketball court, but he is also the one who is most alien to the average viewer, most envied. 

When you see that flash of the wrist, the explosion off the hands, the big man on top of his mountain, surveying something no one else could possibly see and producing a small movement, you are plunged into disassociation; your idea of the big man as pure power is cast aside in favor of the idea of the big man as intuition, as skill, as a force for subtlety, intellect, tricksterism.  

Bill Walton, Arvydas Sabonis and Marc Gasol are the historical standard-bearers for the tall dishman, but the flick of the wrist has been known to possess many of the greats of the position. Shaq, working out of permanent double teams, was low-key sweet with it. Heat big man Bam Adebayo is absolutely lethal at hitting cutters. Bill Russell was an innovator in the outlet passing space, the trigger man for the ‘60s Celtics’ fast-break attack, and Wilt Chamberlain, the other father of NBA big-man play, was unhealthily obsessed with notching decent assist totals, year after year.

In the last decade or so, the NBA (like all professional sports, sooner or later) has shuffled deeper into tactical conformity, with every team driving guards or big, gnarly forwards at the rim possession after possession, always looking to collapse the defense, force awkward switches on pick-and-rolls, scattering opposing defenses and looking to either draw a foul, score at the rim or kick out to open three-point shooters. The old pleasures (and irritants) of isolation play, of open mid-rangers, of big men setting up at the block and waiting around to get the ball and make a move, feel lost in the miasma of modernity. 

But in that swamp, a gigantic Serbian monster has emerged. He is tall. He is wide. He is not traditionally muscled, unable to jump all that high, but preternaturally aware of everything happening around him — his magical hands ready to dish, to dribble, to fire off to an open man be he cross-court or simply somewhere defenders aren’t. In a way, Nikola Jokić is a descendant of Sabonis, of Walton, of every big man who ever broke someone’s brain by flashing an impossible-seeming pass in defiance of the new order. But in so many other ways, there is simply no precedent, no father to what Jokić has accomplished over his last two MVP seasons. His skill and his vision are so incredible that they demand the Nuggets play nearly every possession through him, turning a relatively unathletic, ground-bound center into an engine for total offense unlike anyone who has ever played the game before him. He is that flash of half court high-love passing brilliance that Marc Gasol would bring to a midseason Grizzlies game extended over an entire career. 

He is also so unlike any basketball player who has ever set foot on an NBA court. Watching him excel is like if the Martian Manhunter came to earth, read one or two books that described basketball without ever actually watching it, transformed into a big, beefy body and then dominated, night after night, with a total understanding of “reality” and next to no understanding of “basketball” as people have played it for the last forty years or so.

The stories about Jokić’s early life and career make little sense. He didn’t play for a big club when he was young, like most European sports stars. He was sleeping in Serbia when he was drafted, deep in the second round while ESPN played a Taco Bell commercial. After playing in the 2014 Nike Hoop Summit, a scout complimented his touch, IQ, work ethic, but also doomed him to “low upside” on account of his startling lack of raw athletic talent. For years — years — this was the knock. Too chunky, not fast enough, even if he is exceptionally gifted. After a quadruple-overtime playoff loss to the Blazers, he got into better shape, but not conventional professional-athlete shape, and, as it turns out, this was enough to bring his bizarre on-court genius to full flower. He immediately established himself as the best center in the league, and won two straight MVPs, posting totals that rocked your mind.

Even while this was happening it was strange, because it was like watching Totoro play: Magical, beloved by all children, making life from nothing, while also constantly on the verge of taking a nap. As a case study, watch this play against Sacramento from last season. They always tell big men not to jump too much on defense, to let their size do the work of eating up space, but I don’t think anyone else in the league, facing a smaller player trying to score around him in the post, would just… stand there and let the ball hit his hands. Then, he takes the ball and loopily dribbles it down the court, all while the guy he blocked is still trying to figure out what the hell happened. Then, for no reason aside from the power of pure nonsense flowing through his veins, Jokić tosses a no-look pass in transition to a guard camped at the hoop from beyond the arc, perfectly on point. Three separate events that only he would even think to do, happening one right after the other in a single perfect, unbroken sequence. 

In Jokić’s hands and from his feet, basketball is made into something different and strange, night after night. A dramatic, game-saving block becomes an odd-looking giant-penguin-wing slap. Spin moves in the post happen in slow motion, finishing with his feet affixed to the ground. The only conventional modern aspect of his game is his decent three-point stroke, which is: A) a sentence that would have sounded insane a decade or so ago, and B) still weird, because he doesn’t jump when he shoots them, flying square in the face of every shooting coach’s advice. 

Oh, and did you know that Jokić is a cart-horse rider? The peak of cart-horse racing as a sport in America happened around the beginning of the 20th century. Nothing about the way this person lives, plays, does anything at all reads as fucking normal in the modern world. He is a marvel, unprecedented, the single strangest basketball great in the history of the game, a sui generis athlete whose very existence suggests that we have yet to see the evolution the game may take in the future. God bless him, and all of us who luxuriate in his light.