Serbia’s sports mountaintop has Novak Djokovic, Nikola Jokic as peaks
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PARIS — In a way they tower like cartoon giants over two continents this week, bowing toward each other from both sides of the Atlantic. One extols the other from an American news conference dais toward Europe, and the other lobs hosannas from a Parisian news conference dais toward Denver. All the while a detail shouts: Both hail from the country ranked 108th in population and 117th in land area.
Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets grace their first NBA Finals, Novak Djokovic seeks a men’s record 23rd Grand Slam singles title at the French Open, Jokic’s Game 1 stat line gives box score goose bumps (8-for-12 shooting, 27 points, 14 assists, 10 rebounds), Djokovic’s third round brimmed with the astounding mental strength that makes him Djokovic, and all the while something seems clear: There’s something about sports in Serbia.
There’s really, really something about sports in Serbia.
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“We love sports; no, we really love sports,” said Atila Frankl, one of a row of five Serbian flag-holders cheering Djokovic from an upper deck Friday. “NBA, the first thing I woke up this morning, check the results. Okay, triple-double, 11 points difference, good. So we love sports, and that’s why this week is amazing.”
He notes they have known other amazing weeks of multiple cynosures — Olympic water polo, Olympic volleyball — and that basketball fandom dates back clear to pre-Vlade Divac or pre-Peja Stojakovic and days of “black-and-white TV.” Tennis saw the great Monica Seles whoosh in from Novi Sad (the second-largest city) before Djokovic, Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic whooshed later. It’s just that as Frankl; his wife, Sandra; his 11-year-old daughter, Lejla; and his 10-year-old son, Luka, descended the stairs of Court Philippe Chatrier after Djokovic’s 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5), 6-2 gruel in the wind against rugged 34th-ranked Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain, they knew this is some sports moment.
It’s a moment when a reporter asked Jokic about Djokovic after the Nuggets finished off the Lakers in Los Angeles, and the 28-year-old former farm lad from the smallish city of Sombor got going about the 36-year-old man from big-city Belgrade. “I don’t have his [phone] number, to be honest,” the two-time MVP said, “but he is a guy who represents Serbia in a much bigger scene, and he is a Serbian ambassador, and he’s really idol to the kids in Serbia, not just on the court and the things from his foundation is doing. He is the guy who you can look up [to], ‘I want to be like him.’ He is doing something great for kids, for Serbia, for everything, so we cannot be compared.”
On Wednesday night, Djokovic got going about Jokic, reinforcing a reality familiar to Djokovic listeners through the years: When he gets going on a favored subject, he gets going in block paragraphs. (It’s not a hardship.) He called Miami’s Jimmy Butler “a great guy” and said, “I admire him a lot,” then got rolling with the word, “Unbelievable.”
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“Two years in a row, he’s MVP of regular season,” Djokovic said of Jokic. “Now he’s probably going to be MVP of the playoffs and Finals. He’s incredibly intelligent basketball player. I’m not obviously a basketball expert, but, I mean, I love basketball. I follow it a lot. You know, I have been obviously watching and listening closely to what people have to say about how he plays basketball. It’s so impressive to hear LeBron [James] and, you know, the greats of the game, [Shaquille O’Neal], Magic Johnson, talking about him and praising him. It’s huge.
“NBA league is the biggest and most important basketball league in the world. To be able to be the best player in that league for three years in a row is just stunning. Coming from a small country and a small city in our country, you know, very humble beginnings for him, and he still stayed very modest, very humble, very simple guy, family guy. He loves his horses. You know, he’s into horses, and I find that very funny, but at the same time, I respect it a lot, you know, because he’s sticking to his values, his beliefs, and what he cares about. He doesn’t mind what people think of him. Chapeau [hat tip]. You know, kudos to him. I’m a big fan of him. I hope he wins the Finals.”
Situated in a primo seat for all of this would be Olga Danilovic, a 24-year-old Serbian tennis player ranked 105th who just reached the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time. She smiled when she said, “I’m still with Novak in the same tournament.” She’s also the daughter of Predrag Danilovic, who played 95 NBA games for the Heat and Dallas Mavericks in the mid-1990s and who presides at Serbia’s basketball federation.
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“I definitely follow it,” Olga Danilovic said. “It’s a bit tough to follow when they play at night. But we all know that Jokic is the best player in the world at the moment, and we are super, super proud to have him. I think just we are a sports country in general, and we say in Serbia that we are a basketball country as well.
“My father used to play and used to represent Yugoslavia and whatever else [after the breakup of Yugoslavia], but having Jokic and having someone represent the way he’s doing, and the way, his character, I love the guy. I honestly admire him so much. And the way he’s so spontaneous but also such a nice person and such a humble person. And I think he kept — he’s, you know, himself, and I think that’s the most important part, whatever we do in general, not just basketball, just tennis, in life in general.”
In the kind of internationalism NBA Commissioner Adam Silver would love, she even barged gamely into the 2023 NBA MVP debate — Joel Embiid finished first, Jokic second — when she said, “And I mean, just having him two times MVP …”
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She paused.
“. . . should have been three times, but …”
Continuing: “It’s just unreal.”
People might commit dissertations on how a small country could end up having such a week, but Frankl, the fan from the upper deck and the flags, gave it a try. He’s a Zurich-based marketing executive from Subotica, a Serbian city near Sombor, up near the Hungarian border on the north and the Croatian on the west.
“What we can say, it’s not a product of the system,” he said, even as he mentioned successes of the water polo and basketball systems. “So it’s not that the country has a system. It is really a product of individual talent combined with hard work combined with resilience and a character of resilience.”
The resilience springs from hardship and, in this generation, as told forever in the Djokovic storytelling, childhood in war. “You build the resilience,” Frankl said, “because you are not brought up with a silver spoon. The resilience is built because economically, it's a tough country.”
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While that reality abounds in other countries without yielding this kind of week, Frankl came upon another thought moments later, after showing a photo of himself and his children posing with Jokic. “I said talent, hard work, resilience,” he said. “Probably the fourth — the love for sport. We love football [soccer]. ... We love basketball; we are quite good. We love volleyball, water polo, tennis. There is a big love for sport in the country — male, female.”
And with that and the time zones and the moment in sports, there’s not all that much sleep.
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Source: The Washington Post
