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You’ve been dethroned, LeBron. You’re not the best either, KD. No more king of the court for you, Greek Freak. All of you have been out-performed by a joker.
You read that right. Nikola “The Joker” Jokic soars atop the global basketball mountain.
You read that right. Nikola “The Joker” Jokic soars above all the best ballers. He’s on top of the global basketball mountain.
No one plays basketball better right now than this 27-year-old Denver Nuggets superstar sensation from Serbia.
News leaked that he’ll soon win the NBA’s MVP Award for the second consecutive year after posting these stats: 27 points per game, 13 rebounds, and seven assists per game. On an average night.
No more proof than that is needed. But the video below will convince you.
Check out this guy passing two-handed over his head, between defenders’ legs, behind his back. Think Pete Maravich but more accurate and clever. Conjure up images of Wayne Gretzky being one step ahead of everybody all the time.
Bobby Knight once marveled at Larry Bird’s passing, suggesting Legend had a camera on the back of his head to see all those teammates he passed to he wasn’t even looking at. Joker plays like he has five cameras on his head: one in the back, one on top, one on each side, and one in front. Seriously, entertain yourself. It’s like going to the circus. View this:
I need you to think about this. This guy stands seven feet tall and plays point guard, forward, and center. There’s not a point guard in the league who passes the ball with more creativity and accuracy than this guy. Probably never in the history of the sport.
A joke this is not.
I haven’t seen a guy pass the ball like him since Bird, the greatest passer of the basketball of all time.
I know what you’re thinking: this is bull. This is hyperbole. This is just a guy writing something to grab eyeballs and generate clicks.
Think again. I’m not joking.
Let me say it again in case you didn’t catch it. He’s 7 feet tall and brings the ball up court, runs the offense, and hits guys with passes to the right while looking left. Threading bounce passes that hit his teammates in perfect stride.
Never in the history of the NBA has a guy this tall been as effective running the point for a basketball team. Not even Magic Johnson. He was only 6 foot 9.
I never thought I’d see a guy play with the same mind-blowing skills as Bird. I thought he was a once-in-a-lifetime genius. He still is. But Joker’s also a genius.
When I think of a genius like Albert Einstein, I imagine sitting around a blackboard watching him work through some math formulas that no one else can understand; then making the math turn into some great scientific discovery that changes the world’s entire paradigm for the next five centuries.
When I think of genius I contemplate Elton John singing “Norma Jean,” “Tiny Dancer” and “Your Song” marveling at how he was able to create a melody and words that reach into the deepest emotions of billions of people.
He makes people feel things, remember things, regret things, think about things – people he doesn’t even know and never will.
That’s genius.
Geniuses can’t be understood by non-geniuses. They do things we can’t even fathom doing because they’re beyond normal, outside the realm of realistic concepts. Conventional thinking can’t capture them in words. What they do is foreign.
We just ask “How does he do that?”
You won’t find any others anywhere on YouTube – except for ones of Bird – that shows a guy doing things on a basketball court that don’t make sense, that have never been done before, that are so well executed, that are just so hard to do.
We can tell our grandkids we’re living in the era of a basketball genius, Nikola Jokic.
I think of him the way I think of Steve Miller’s killer album that had a hit on it titled “The Joker.”
You hear that song and think to yourself: “Gosh, that’s a perfect sound with unbelievably well-crafted and memorable lyrics.”
You think to yourself “When Steve Miller made that song, he was channeling his genius talent.”
And he was.
“Some people call me the space cowboy. Some call me the gangster of love.”
You remember those lyrics because it’s artistic genius.
“Really love your peaches wanna shake your tree.”
I love Nikola Jokic’s peaches, which are his passes.
He shakes my tree.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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