Serbia's Nikola Jokic is one of the most unique players in the NBA, but how much has his playing style impacted the league in general?
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00:00Positionless basketball is a new normal in the NBA, but for Nikola Djokic, it's a style
00:08he was raised to play.
00:10So as Robert O'Connell writes in today's Daily Cover, the passing big man, fondly known as
00:15Joker grew up playing the Serbian way.
00:17Robert, how would you describe what the Serbian style of basketball is?
00:21Yeah, well, it kind of all descends and comes from this guy, Aleksandar Nikolic, who in
00:29the middle of the 20th century kind of adopted a lot of John Wooden tactics, a lot of tactics
00:32from American college basketball, but really was kind of at the vanguard of what we now
00:37call positionless basketball.
00:39He wanted his guard seal playing the post, his big men to handle the ball, pass the ball.
00:46And so, yeah, they kind of developed this style in which everybody as a young kid playing
00:49basketball over there learned every skill and it made their own court play very fluid,
00:54very interchangeable and dynamic.
00:55I mean, they would have relatively few set plays, but be able to kind of improvise endlessly
01:00off of those plays.
01:01Yeah, the fluidity and the limit of set plays.
01:04I found it really interesting, too, that Djokic wasn't actually allowed to run the pick and
01:07roll until he was 14 years old.
01:10Yeah, so in the Serbian style of play, in the Serbian style of bringing up younger players,
01:16they like them to develop particular skills or kind of round out their skill set before
01:21they're working on anything too specific.
01:23So the idea is that if you have a tall kid and, you know, he's just running the roll
01:27man on pick and roll all the time, he'll develop that set of skills, but not the rest of the
01:31game.
01:32And if they kind of prohibit them from that sort of shortcut style of play, they'll have
01:36a broader skill set when they finally do start to hone in on certain areas.
01:40And cut to now, of course, where he and Murray are the only two teammates to tally 100 assists
01:44to one another this season, him playing obviously effectively on either position in the pick
01:49and roll.
01:50And one other thing that was interesting, too, is only three foreign countries have
01:53produced more NBA players than Serbia has.
01:55That's Canada, France, and Germany.
01:57So granted, not every player out of Serbia is at the level of the Joker, but like Boban
02:02Marjanovic and his giant hands are a riot on Twitter.
02:05But on the court, he's more of a role player.
02:08How has Djokic been such a standout in the NBA?
02:11Yeah, I mean, you also have these players like the kings of the 2000s.
02:15You had Peja and Vlade.
02:17But Djokic is kind of his own thing.
02:19Speaking with his former coaches in Serbia, they're careful not to give themselves too
02:24much credit.
02:25You know, obviously, the Serbian system helped him, but they refer to him as a natural.
02:28And they say it's kind of a perfect match of student and teacher, student and style
02:33of schooling, I guess.
02:36He's just, yeah, he's the perfect player for that kind of philosophy they have.
02:40And he has all the skill set to really make it sing in the league.
02:44Robert O'Connell, with a unique insight into the Joker.
02:47Thanks so much for the time.
02:48Yeah, thank you very much.