Nikola Jokić, easy: Basketball is less and less American

Being named the best player in the best league in the world is the highest individual recognition for a player in club basketball. To repeat such a season lets everyone know that you are one of the best who took the ball in their hands. The third MVP award - it leads to basketball immortality.

For the third time in four years, Nikola Jokic was named the NBA's most valuable player, putting him alongside greats like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Moses Malone.

Only LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain with four, Bill Russell and Michael Jordan with five and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with six MVP honors are ahead of the Denver Nuggets.

Renowned American journalists who follow the NBA league closely had the right to vote. That Jokić really is the best was confirmed by praise from non-voting journalists, opposing coaches and players like LeBron James, who in almost every episode of his fantastic podcast "Mind the Game" praises various aspects of Jokić's game - basketball intelligence, pick-and-roll game , overview of the field and decision-making in the most important moments.

Reasons why it is the best

It is fascinating that Jokić reconciled fans of traditional and apologists of advanced statistics, but also purists who do not care about statistics, but whether the player "plays the right way", makes good decisions and makes his teammates better basketball players.

If we are talking about simple statistics, Jokić is the only player in history who finished the season in the top ten places in four statistical categories: number of points (2.085 - fifth place), assists (708 - second place), rebounds (976 - third place). and steals (108 – eighth place).

The last data speaks of the improvement of the weakest aspect of his game until recently - defense. The number of assists confirms that he is the best passer from the center position in the history of basketball.

Advanced statistics, increasingly important and valued in basketball circles, point to even greater dominance. He is the best, for the fourth year in a row, in numerous parameters that are the result of complex formulas and show how much real influence a player has on events on the field, such as: PER (Player Efficiency Rating, individual efficiency), Win Shares (percentage share of a certain player in the victories of his team), Box Plus/Minus (differences in the result when a certain player is on and off the field)...

This is followed by interesting facts from the databases of the American sports media, which we are bombarded with almost every morning. Chances are your day will start with news of Nikola Jokic accomplishing something that no one in NBA history has accomplished, or at least no one since Chamberlain, Jabbar, or Jordan.

One of the last bits of trivia says that Jokić managed to achieve at least one triple-double against every team he faced, making him the third player in history to do so. Jokić is currently in fourth place on the all-time list with 130 triple-doubles.

Photo: Strahinja Aćimović/Tanjug

The last, no less important thing is related to the aesthetics of his game, which inspires the audience, but also changes the way of thinking about basketball.

Apart from the characteristics of former centers - elite footwork, contact play and a fantastic half-crook, i.e. modern fives - pick-and-roll game and three-point shot, Jokić also has an incredible understanding of the game, an overview of the field and a feeling for passing, which made him a prototype point- center. Simply put, a playmaker in the body of a center.

Jokic leads the NBA in touches, which means that hardly a Denver offense goes by in which he does not play a significant role. However, it does not stay in his hands for long, which improves the flow of the ball, which is the basic characteristic of quality attacking teams.

Jokić selflessly makes his teammates better with his passes, so it's no coincidence that many players like Aaron Gordon, Bruce Brown or Monte Morris played their best basketball in the Denver jersey, and later paid for it through stronger contracts.

The rest of the basketball world is coming to America

At the 1992 Olympics, a Brazilian basketball player named Marcel de Souza said, commenting on the American Dream Team, "I will never be able to play like Scottie Pippen and my son will never be able to play like Scottie Pippen." But maybe my grandson will play like Scottie Pippen."

Thirty years later, the MVP trophy will go to a player who was not born in the USA for the sixth time in a row.

Even if a miracle had happened and Jokić had not been declared the most valuable player of the NBA, the award would have gone to the Canadian Gildžus Aleksander or the Slovenian Luka Dončić, the only serious competitors. And the fourth was a European, the Greek Yannis Adetokumbo.

In the opinion of almost every basketball fan, there is also the Cameroonian Joel Embiid who was not in the competition because he played too few games. But this means that the positions of the five current best basketball players in the world are filled by non-Americans.

Apart from the race for the MVP award, the American basketball public can also worry that their players are not even at the top of the list of scorers and jumpers, where the Slovenian Dončić and the Lithuanian Sabonis are, while the awards for the best defender and the best rookie went to two Frenchmen - Gober and Vembanyama.

When we add to all that and the increasingly frequent failures of the American national team, we can draw two conclusions - either American basketball is in crisis, at least when it comes to developing players of the highest quality; or the rest of the basketball world is getting closer to the once elusive America. Or both.

How did it start?

There are various theories about the reasons for the blurring of the differences between basketball in the USA and the rest of the world. The gathering of the unsurpassed, unrepeatable Dream Team in 1992 and their participation in the Olympic Games in Barcelona had a tremendous impact on the popularization of this wonderful sport around the globe, which led to a significantly greater number of kids taking up basketball.

Until then, very rigid and closed, the NBA league slowly began to open its doors to foreign players. First for those in their prime and at their best, and then, with the development of scouting networks, for kids with impressive physical predispositions and talent.

The players who came, especially the European ones, arrived fully tactically and technically trained. While in the development of a young player in Europe the focus is on numerous trainings and mastering the basic elements of the game such as passing technique, footwork or movement without the ball, in the USA trainings are neglected at the expense of AAU (Amateur Athletic Association) tournaments in which talented children show their individual qualities in front of through the eyes of college scouts.

Many coaches and former players criticize AAU competitions and see them as the reason for the erosion of quality among American basketball players.

Lakers Nuggets Basketball

There are frequent cases in which children decide to prioritize AAU tournaments, where they play three or four games a day for different teams, over quality training with high school coaches.

They have been instilled with the mindset that it's not about whether their team won, but how they played. The logical consequence is that the feeling of belonging to a team developed much more among foreign basketball players, who often spent their entire careers in one franchise, like Nowitzki in Dallas or Ginobili in San Antonio.

A similar trend continued with the newer generations, which is why it is very difficult to imagine Jokic anywhere but Denver, Janis anywhere but Milwaukee or Doncic anywhere but Dallas.

On the other hand, numerous American stars like Harden, Durant or Mitchell are increasingly using the unwritten postulate that the NBA is a "league of players", so they blackmail clubs by not playing unless they are traded to desired destinations, where the teammates are of better quality or the night life is more content.

The NBA is in good hands.

Maybe the NBA isn't getting gems from Michigan, Indiana or North Carolina anymore, but it's finding them in places like Yaounde, Athens and Sombor. By opening NBA academies in South America, Africa and Asia, the influence of the NBA is expanding significantly and the possibility of a new generation coming from these areas that will be talked about. In terms of talent, the league is in a good position and should not worry about its future.

Jamal Crawford recently gave one of the biggest compliments to Jokic's understanding of basketball in a podcast: "The Joker doesn't try to beat you guarding him. He's trying to beat your coach.''

We now have confirmation that Nikola Jokic has been named MVP for the third time, but we'll have to wait and see if he can get his Nuggets out of a bad start to the series against Minnesota. That is, when asked if there is a coach in the NBA whom he cannot beat.

*this text was originally published on April 20, and updated after Jokic won the MVP award