425 points, 211 rebounds and 144 assists – and that in a single month. Numbers that only three basketball players in the history of the NBA have achieved to date. Now Nikola Jokic has joined the ranks.
Out of 16 games, the Denver Nuggets picked up 11 wins in the first month of the year and now sit second in the Northwest Division. The Nuggets’ success is inevitably linked to the name Nikola Jokic. The centre, who was voted MVP last year, has been playing like someone from another planet since the start of the year, shining with averages of 26.6 points, 13.2 rebounds and 9 assists.
400+ points, 200+ rebounds and 100+ assists in one calendar month – only NBA legends Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson and most recently Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who achieved this in March 1976, had reached these heights before. So now Jokic has joined the ranks.
Antetokounmpo as a role model
The 26-year-old himself, however, is not so much concerned with individual statistics, as he himself repeatedly emphasises. Rather, he sees himself as a team player, but he also emulates other basketball players. Like Giannis Antetokounmpo, for example, who, according to Jokic, is “a good assist giver” but can also “score 30, 40, 50 points at any time. When he does that, he doesn’t need assists – and when he serves, he usually finds the free man.”
For the Serbian, Antetokounmpo is “a player to look up to”, as he revealed after the 136-100 win at the Bucks: “I respect him a lot and have a lot of respect for what he did. What he accomplished in Milwaukee, I want to accomplish in Denver.”
The “Greek Freak” has two major things over the “Joker”: Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to the championship last year almost single-handedly and was also rightly voted MVP of the Finals.
