From ditching basketball practice for the racetrack to giving his coach the silent treatment, there are plenty of interesting stories about Jokić in Mike Singer’s new book.
Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokić sat down with author Mike Singer for his book Why So Serious? The Untold Story of NBA Champion Nikola Jokić. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
Nikola Jokić keeps making ridiculous plays for the Denver Nuggets.
It’s not just one night or one season for Jokić, who is averaging a triple-double as the Nuggets seem to have righted the ship after struggles to start the 2024-25 run. Still, Mike Singer couldn’t have picked a better time to release his book about Jokić, which came out in December.
The former Denver Post journalist, who now works for the Nuggets as director of intelligence and strategy, recently celebrated the release of his book, Why So Serious? The Untold Story of NBA Champion Nikola Jokić, which charts the star’s path to the pros and follows him through his 2023 MVP campaign and NBA Finals victory.
Jokić is known for being extremely private and hesitant to accept congratulations for his individual success, insisting he’s only on the court to win games. Singer’s book paints that picture well, but the author got closer to the athlete than anyone has before, traveling to Serbia and speaking to many of Jokić’s early coaches. Singer even heard from Jokić’s father.
Take this as your official recommendation to buy the book — and if that wasn’t enough, here are five themes we loved during our read.
When Jokić Took a Break from Basketball to Tend Horses, His Coach Brought Practice (and the Whole Team) to the Racetrack.
Jokić is known for his off-court hobby of horse racing. That love was fostered from a young age in Sombor, Serbia, where Jokić is from. His dad, Branislav, always saw his son’s potential to be a huge basketball star (though he was dreaming of European leagues, not the NBA) so Branislav pushed his son to focus on hoops.
Nikola wasn’t having it. At sixteen, Singer reports, Jokić took a four-month break from basketball so he could work with racehorses day in and day out. His coach at the time brought the team to do conditioning drills at the racetrack because he know Jokić would be there. Even then, Jokić would spend his time tending to the horses while his teammates ran despite their pleas for him to get fit.
His teammates still liked him because they saw how Jokić’s game elevated their own, according to Singer. Many parts of the book address the big man’s fitness, including jabs about being overweight that impacted him more than some might have realized. Eventually, Singer describes how Jokić committed to his conditioning, but that happens way later in the story.
Jokić Is Really Stubborn…and Really Competitive
Many anecdotes in the book discuss Jokić’s stubbornness and resistance to being pushed by coaches, particularly early in his career while he was developing in Serbia. His coaches and family often sought nontraditional ways to motivate the young athlete.
Dejan Milojević, who tragically died last year, coached Jokić at Mega Vizura in Serbia before the Nuggets drafted him. Milojević seemed to crack the code at getting buy-in from Jokić when Milojević realized Jokić’s indifference toward drills could be combated by designing each drill to have a competitive element.
Singer also details a time in 2019 when Jokić fought with Nuggets coach Michael Malone. The two wouldn’t speak to each other for several games until Mason Plumlee, who played for the team at the time, intervened. Malone eventually took Jokić aside, told him he loved him, and mended fences; the two deem to have a good relationship now, based on Singer’s book.
NBA Scouts Had a High Ceiling and Low Floor for Jokić
When the Nuggets drafted Jokić, the team sent him to be evaluated by P3 Peak Performance Project. Jokić was sent there largely because of the issues with his fitness.
Jokić worked with P3 for six weeks and didn’t touch a basketball the entire time, which shocked the trainers, who usually can’t get hoopers to put down the ball. By the end, P3 determined Jokić couldn’t be slotted perfectly into just one category — the story of his life as a 6’11 center who passes better than anyone else in the league.
Evaluators at P3 told Singer that Jokić shared characteristics with a group of players with the longest NBA careers, called kinematic movers, who move equally well to both the left and right. However, Jokić is also part of the group that has tended toward short careers: traditional bigs.
So far, Jokić’s unique skillset is working out.
Jokić is a Video Game Legend and Prankster
Though Jokić takes winning seriously, Singer’s book shows the Nuggets star has a silly side, too. One highlight in the book is when Jokić signed so many autographs for kids in Serbia that he injured a tendon and couldn’t play a game the next day.
The book also discusses Jokić’s love of video games. In Serbia, he and a teammate would regularly play Pro Evolution Soccer. During the 2018 and 2019 NBA seasons, Singer describes Mario Kart tournaments where Plumlee, Malik Beasley and Tyler Lydon would face off against Jokić, Juancho Hernangomez and Vlatko Cancar. Later in the story, Singer reveals that during the time the NBA season was suspended for the COVID-19 pandemic, Jokić played CounterStrike with a group including Luka Dončić, Boban Marjanović, Bogdan Bogdanović and Miloš Teodosić every night.
Earlier in his career, Jokić was also known as a prankster, often stealing and hiding his teammates’ shoes. Singer discovered the reason we all know what Jokić’s now-infamous childhood passport photo looks like is because his former teammate in Serbia, Nenad Miljenović, wanted to prank him back. When Miljenović came into possession of the passport and saw how goofy Jokić looked, he posted the photo on Twitter immediately as a way to poke fun at the big man.
Singer’s Book Includes Cameos From Plenty of Big Names
We won’t say too much in this section, because we don’t want to spoil the book, but much of the stort is told through the eyes of others who were around him. Singer did talk to Jokić for several hours for the book, but some of the best insights in the final product come from others.
In the basketball world, Milojevic, the late Bill Walton, Kevin Durant and Charles Barkley all make appearances, but the NFL world is prominent, too, with mentions of Tom Brady and, in one of the most exclusive tales in the book, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay.