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They said he wasn’t athletic. They said he couldn’t jump high. They said his game was boring to watch.
They said he was padding his stats to win his third straight MVP. They said he was too slow and couldn’t play defense.
They didn’t want him to win the MVP for the season. They didn’t want him to win the NBA Finals title or the MVP for that series.
They kept picking at him, finding flaws, downplaying his abilities. They said he couldn’t win the big one.
They were wrong about all of this. Every single word, every slight, every so-called analytical assessment of his skills.
Boring? Couldn’t disagree more. Unathletic? The best hand-eye coordination in basketball and maybe of any athlete in any sport. That’s athleticism, you nimrods.
Every single one of those shallow people revealed how much they don’t know about basketball genius. It’s not how high you jump, it’s how effective you are, dolts.
You biased – in some cases seemingly racist – lowlifes are the critics of Nikola Jokic, who Monday night carried his Denver Nuggets team to the NBA championship, and won MVP. He broke the record for the most combined points, rebounds, and assists in a playoff run. I could list here a dozen all-time records he broke this year.
In the final game Monday night, he scored 25 points in the second half for a total of 28 and hauled down 14 rebounds. When his team needed him to score, when the pressure amped up to its apex – win one game for a championship — he came through.
He came through last night. He came through in the game before that, and the game before that, and the series before that, and the series before that, and the regular season, and the regular season before that, and the regular season before that. No hiccups. All spectacular performances. You read that right: all of them.
They underestimated this guy known all around the world now as The Joker. They joked about his shortcomings. They joked about his athletic prowess. They joked about his slow feet.
But the joke was ultimately on them. They were the fools. They showed themselves to be one big embarrassing joke.
With all the misinformed blowhard crap he put up with, he had every right last night to go straight to the microphone and tell all his critics that he proved them wrong and they need to shut their mouths and stop making inaccurate and emotionally charged accusations about his basketball ability. He could have thrown all the vitriol they hit him with right back at them.
But he didn’t. Because this guy’s just different as a person just as he is a basketball player.
Once the game ended with the title won, he didn’t jump around as if to say “Hey everybody, look at what I did.” Instead, he made sure to, first and foremost, congratulate each of the Miami Heat players. He showed them the respect they deserved.
When awarded the MVP, he didn’t make a big deal about it. He just talked about his teammates and put it in its proper light: “It’s over. Now we can all go home.”
You get the feeling he was telling everybody who was making such a big deal about his performances to travel their own paths and stop getting all caught up in what is, as he sees it, just a basketball game.
Humility is a rarity among athletic superstars. Can you imagine how Kyrie Irving would have gloated had his team won the title? How much more would we loathe him than we already do?
When someone wins a major championship, they often like to be self-congratulatory and have everyone look at them and show admiration.
The Joker wants no part of that. He just wanted to get through the ceremony and out of the spotlight as soon as he could without having to spend time answering questions about how great he is. And he is great.
Really, really, really great.
I’ve never seen anyone play basketball quite the way he does. So skilled at all things basketball. So consistent. So effective. So productive. So smart. So selfless. So impossible to guard. So awesome. So tuned in. So perceptive.
Yet these rare gifts don’t make him want to shout about his greatness to the world. He doesn’t want to flaunt his abilities, swing back at his critics, or get revenge on them for hurling insults his way incessantly.
Not this guy. Not this basketball player from a distant land called Serbia most of us know nothing about. Not this superstar hooper born on another continent, a world away.
Not now. Not last night. Not after cementing his place as the best basketball player on any of the seven continents.
Substantial, caring human beings like this aren’t normal. They don’t do normal things. They don’t act like most of us would in situations such as his, petty, and spiteful after being unfairly accused and abused.
This dude doesn’t do normal human things. This is someone we don’t come across often, a humble savant, a cool person who has a grip on what’s most important and it isn’t basketball. It’s his wife and child and his two brothers. Family is his highest joy. Basketball is just what he does to make a living.
Perspective he gives us. Lessons he teaches us. Greatness he shows us. Jokes he tells us.
Right now, mark this run that he went on in the NBA playoffs as one of the most impressive sports achievements by any athlete ever. Period.
Also, remember it forever as a case of a guy who proved to the world he’s the best at his craft and didn’t gloat about it but was actually classy and humble.
What a bunch of fools he made of his countless critics. What a story he told us. What an example of how to live.
What a basketball player.
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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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