Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic just keeps getting more and more likable.
Some people might be put off by his attitude towards basketball, and his lack of enthusiasm for winning NBA Championships (even though he and his team won it all last year). Personally, I can’t get enough of it.
Here you have a guy that is arguably the best player in professional basketball, and he treats his career (playing basketball) like its a blue collar job. Jokic simply cannot wait to stop playing basketball and do things he’s more interested in…like owning race horses.
He doubled down on all of that when he was a guest on his teammate Michael Porter Jr’s podcast Curious Mike (yes, every pro athlete has a podcast). In the interview, Jokic talked about how he approaches the game of basketball, but talked more about how he views life after he hangs his jersey up for final time.
Based on how he spoke, he doesn’t mind the basketball part of his career, but hates the fame component that comes with being an NBA All-star:
“Being famous, some people like it, some people don’t. When I finish my career, I really wish nobody knows me. I wish my kid or kids in the future … remember me as a dad. I think that’s gonna be my goal in life.
I really don’t like this life because, at the end of the day, we are just basketball players. We are just good at what we are doing. But the media is something that is around us, and of course, we are getting paid because of the media, because of our popularity.”
Jokic conceded that if it weren’t for the NBA’s popularity (and his subsequent fame), he wouldn’t be able to do what he does for a living. However, all the money in the world couldn’t change Jokic’s mind about how he feels about fame:
“It just feels sad, whenever you go to the bar, restaurant, some game, people are just taking their phones out and trying to record you. I think that’s really, I’m going to say, rude. It’s not that I’m out showing myself. I’m just who I am.
To not have a phone, that’s another big goal of mine. Just to live in the moment, be a normal person. Go drink with your buddy or go have lunch or go play with your kids or go ride horses, and nobody’s going to make a big deal of that.”
Not having a phone, riding horses, and hanging out with your kids seems like the dream life. I hope Jokic is able to get there one day…after he wins me a couple of more sports bets of course…
You can view the full interview with the most interesting man in the NBA (who’s ironically the least interested man in basketball) below:
