The NBA season is over and a new champion has been crowned.
The Denver Nuggets knocked off the longshot-Miami Heat on Monday to win the series 4-1 and clinch the franchise’s first ever NBA title, thanks in large part to the efforts of Finals MVP Nikola Jokić.
And he could not have cared less.
Ok, maybe that’s not fair. Obviously Jokić cared enough to drop 28 points on the Heat, along with 16 rebounds and four assists.
But after the game, celebrating the accomplishment was the furthest thing from his mind. In fact, all he wanted to do was get home.
In a courtside interview with confetti still falling around him, Jokić was asked how it feels to be an NBA champion:
“It’s good, it’s good. The job is done. We can go home now.”
Talk about a man who knows how to separate his work life and his private life. This is like the guy who turns off his phone as he leaves the office for the weekend and doesn’t check his email until he comes back in on Monday. Once the workday is over, that’s it.
Unfortunately for Joker, that’s not really it. Because now that the Nuggets have won the title, there’s still a champion’s parade to look forward to in Denver. Except Jokić isn’t looking forward to it at all, and just wants to get back home to his native Serbia.
When Jokić was asked about the parade and told that it wasn’t until Thursday, you could see his spirits getting crushed right before our eyes:
And it turns out there’s a reason the superstar is eager to get back home. Jokić is well-known for his love of his horses back home in Serbia – and it turns out one of them races this coming Sunday:
Well he should still be able to make it home in time for the race. But in the meantime, Jokic is going to have a lot of texts and calls to respond to. Except when he realized the number of texts he had gotten when checking his phone after the game, he looked like he was ready to smash it into a million pieces and ignore every single one of those messages.
I love it. A guy who knows when the workday is over and just wants to go home.
Of course Jokić did take some time to celebrate the big win with his daughter and teammates – but we all know where he really wanted to be, because he made that perfectly clear.
Nikola Jokic Was Drafted During A Taco Bell Commercial
Nikola Jokic, the 7-foot Denver Nuggets big man and two time NBA MVP, has quite the story.
Born in Serbia in 1995, the now-five time NBA All-Star shared a cramped two bedroom apartment with his parents, grandmother, and two brothers. His siblings, which are a decade older and just as tall as Nikola, take a lot of the credit for toughening up a young “Joker.”
Both of his older brothers played basketball (one even in college in the United States) and helped Nikola hone in his basketball skills and, more importantly, grow out of his “husky” stage as a kid.
I mean, just look at this picture of him when he was a kid. This man is now dominating the NBA, the world’s premiere league the sport that bring the planet’s best basketball players all together in one place.
He’ll never be able to live down that infamous picture of him as a young kid, and I’ve got to think that he looks pretty good in modern day, despite apparently drinking 3 liters of Coca-cola a day as recently as 2o14, when he entered the NBA.
And when the time came to enter the league during the 2014 NBA Draft, it wasn’t as glamorous as getting drafted is usually cracked up to be. This stunning footage (which is real) is pulled straight from ESPN’s coverage of the 2014 draft, and is officially the “welcome to the league” moment for the Serbian superstar.
Long story short, ESPN didn’t even bother to pull away from a Taco Bell “Quesarito” advertisement when it was announced that the Denver Nuggets had drafted Nikola Jokic with the 41st pick in the second round of the 2014 NBA Draft.
The video is posted below, which reads:
“There will never be a greater underdog story than 2x MVP Nikola Jokic being drafted during a Taco Bell “Quesarito” ad.”
Two things to really unpack here:
First, talk about the disrespect to Jokic on this one, especially after how special he has become as arguably the best Denver Nuggets player in the franchise’s history (saying that could be controversial, but no one would argue if they win this year’s title).
Foreign players have always been overlooked and have been received poorly by fans when it comes to the draft, but more and more players from all over the world have been entering the league and killing it in the past decade.
And second, I miss the Quesarito so, so, so much. Taco Bell removed the item from their menu back in March of this year, much to the dismay of fans of the Mexican fast food restaurant. Maybe this extra exposure of the Quesarito from Jokic’s success will fire up the movement to bring back the fan favorite Taco Bell item.
Just let that sink in: Nikola Jokic, who is quite possibly the most elegant, clumsy, in-control, out-of-control player the NBA has ever seen and was even drafted during a commercial break, just led the Nuggets to their first ever NBA title.
