Meet Nikola Jokic's favorite team: KK Joker / News - Basketnews.com

When he's not busy being the MVP of the NBA or watching his beloved horses, Nikola Jokic has another passion: following the games of his favorite Serbian basketball club, KK Joker

Credit: USA TODAY Sports - Scanpix Credit USA TODAY Sports - Scanpix

If you have been following Nikola Jokic over the years, you have probably learned by now that the Serbian big man is not your typical MVP of the league.

Jokic doesn't love social media, he's not interested in meeting celebrities and hanging with them. When the NBA season is over, he spends most of his time back in Serbia with his horses.

The Serbian superstar is so in love with horses that in a last year's interview, he said that his dream, after the end of his basketball career, is to become a trotting coach.

"My dream is to move back to Serbia and become a trotting coach after my basketball career," Jokic said on TV4. "In Serbia, horse racing is not really a big sport. I enjoy being around horses. It's my first passion."

The Denver Nuggets star even received his 2021-22 season MVP award in a horse stable back in Serbia.

"It's amazing, my horse and I were doing a fast workout in the afternoon instead of the morning, and I was wondering why," Jokic said in an interview last year. "It was really emotional, a really emotional moment for me. Nobody has come here before. It's actually an amazing thing that everyone came here; it's once in a lifetime."

The Serbian MVP stated that he primarily uses his phone to watch horse races, but we recently discovered that it's not entirely true.

Last week, the Denver Nuggets posted a video on their Instagram profile in which Jokic was deeply focused on his phone after the end of practice.

At the end of the video, Jokic screamed something in Serbian, which roughly translates to "that's how you do it, Dapa," and then went into the locker room with coach Michael Malone.

In the comments section, many believed that Jokic was watching a horse race, but they were actually wrong. The Denver Nuggets superstar was watching his favorite Serbian basketball team: KK Joker.

Dapa is one of the players of the team, Dalibor Dapa, a veteran Serbian player who recently joined KK Joker.

The team is based in Sombor, Jokic's hometown, a small city in the autonomous province of Vojvodina. The game Jokic was watching ended up in a victory for KK Joker with the final score of 99-86 against Borac Zemun.

KK Joker currently plays in the Serbian second division, and they're fighting for a promotion to the top division (the top two teams will get a promotion to the Serbian's top division).

The club was rebranded as KK Joker back in 2017, using Jokic's nickname. The whole Jokic family is involved in the project, with his father, Branislav, acting as the team's president.

Nikola's brothers, Nemanja and Strahinja, are also part of the organization. Nemanja is listed as a club board member, while Strahinja is the team's general director.

The original idea behind the project is to create the right structure to develop the youth talents of the area surrounding Sombor. For many years in the same area, another club had a huge impact, KK Hemofarm.

Sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, KK Hemofarm, from 1992 to 2012, it became one of the biggest clubs in Serbia, developing many young talents from the Vojvodina area.

But the situation changed after the pharmaceutical company decided to terminate its investment in the club. Since then, the lack of such a centralized organization in the area has definitely been felt.

So a few years ago, the Jokic family decided to help the team based in Sombor and become a new focal point for the area kids.

"We founded the club by starting from scratch," Branislav Jokic said in an interview with Sportal. "We made a five-year plan and created teams for all the younger categories. Right now, we're exactly where we wanted to be."

Despite the focus on the youth side, with the increasing involvement of Nikola's brothers, the goal has now become to reach the Serbian top division, and the total budget has been increased.

As Nikola's father revealed, Misko Raznatovic, Nikola Jokic's agent, is also advising in shaping the club for the future.

"He's helping us a lot with his advice and suggestions on how to make things better," Branislav Jokic explained.

"If we can create a talent like Nikola, that would be our greatest success. But my main goal for us is to become the center of basketball in this region."

Strahinja is probably the most involved brother in the project, even when he's in the USA, he follows pretty much everything.

Nikola, on the other hand, supports the club from the USA during the NBA season, and when he returns to Serbia during the offseason, he follows many training sessions and gives his own bits of advice to the players.

The team broadcasts every match live on YouTube to make it easier for the fans to follow, even for Nikola.

Both Nike and the Denver Nuggets provided some help in terms of equipment and apparel. The club is still very young but has already come a long way and wants to keep growing.

"I can only say one thing to the boys in the club," Branislav Jokic told Sportal. "Only together we can reach the goals that we have set for ourselves. Whether it'll be in one year, two, or three, if we work together, we'll get there. We need to be persistent."

It is hard to predict if KK Joker will ever be able to develop a talent as big as Nikola Jokic, but it's pretty clear their will to become a development hub in the Vojvodina area.

One thing is for sure, though: next time you catch Nikola Jokic staring intensely at his phone, you know that he's either watching horse races or KK Joker games, there's no other alternative.

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