PicoBlog

Every so often the past few years, there’s a piece of personal trivia Jay Smith will pull out with a certain level of pride.

Few players have captured the attention and imagination of the larger basketball world more of late than Nikola Jokic, the doughy Denver Nuggets superstar whose skill set at his size defies historical precedent. 

If Jokic’s name happens to come up in conversation, Smith, now the director of player personnel and recruiting at Michigan, has a story only a select few can match – he coached one of Jokic’s older brothers, Nemanja, while an assistant at Detroit Mercy in the late 2000s.

“They’re like ‘No, you didn’t,’” Smith told me last week. “I’ll say ‘Yeah, he was at Detroit.’ They’re always like ‘He was?!’ They can’t believe it.”

Perhaps no tale about Jokic’s two older brothers seems too far-fetched, but the thought that one of them toiled in relative obscurity in American college basketball for four years stretches credulity for some. Every bit of it is true, though.

As their youngest brother has racked up two NBA MVPs and an NBA championship over the past three years, Nemanja and Strahinja Jokic have become celebrities in their own right, inseparable appendages of their sibling’s improbable rise in the sport. Tall, towering and heavily tattooed, the two are fixtures at Nuggets games, sitting near the court and serving both as their brother’s bodyguards and hypemen. Over the past several years, they’ve gotten into spats with opposing fans, players and even courtside celebrities. Shortly after the Nuggets won the NBA Finals earlier this month, with the confetti falling from the Ball Arena rafters, the two were tossing Denver coach Michael Malone into the air in celebration. Their confrontational ways have earned them a reputation that’s somehow both endearing and menacing while making them cult figures for those who closely follow the game. 

Long before Nikola got to the United States and imposed his will on an unsuspecting sport, it was Nemanja, the middle Jokic brother, who introduced at least some fans in this country to the family name through basketball after playing three years at Detroit and a final season at Division II C.W. Post (now LIU Post). 

And while he never came close to the heights his baby brother has reached over the course of his NBA career, Nemanja raised some eyebrows of his own – and left some who watched him up close still wondering all these years later about what could have been.

“If he was 6-9, he would have been a high-major player, no doubt in my mind,” Smith said. “If he was 6-9, it’s over – he’s in the league. He’s that skilled.”

Finding his way

Nemanja Jokic’s path to basketball in the United States began in earnest through another prominent basketball player from their native Serbia, Darko Milicic.

Now known primarily as an NBA Draft bust selected ahead of the likes of Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh, Milicic was once regarded as the kind of prospect who could have become what Nikola Jokic became nearly two decades later, a skilled big man who could impact the game in a slew of ways.

That promise never materialized into something more tangible, but through his friendship with the Jokic brothers, Milicic’s presence in Detroit, where he played for the Pistons for three seasons, offered Jokic an entrypoint to American basketball. With a standout high school career in Serbia on his resume, Nemanja received a scholarship to Detroit. Initially, Jokic lived with Milicic in his mansion in Rochester Hills, Mich., had access to Milicic’s array of sports cars and regularly attended Pistons games before Milicic was traded to Orlando and Jokic had to move into a dorm.

“I was living a NBA player’s life,” Jokic said to Sports Illustrated in 2017. “I was throwing the best parties on campus—at his house.”

Known to those around him as Shuma – a nickname with origins no one interviewed for this story could pinpoint – Jokic entered the college game in 2006 with an unconventional background, as a rare 22-year-old freshman and the only foreign-born player on a roster made up largely of players from Michigan. 

While his contributions over his three years in Detroit were limited – he never averaged more than 4.2 points per game in a season – Jokic’s on-court traits intrigued those who saw him. The smallest of his brothers at 6-foot-6 and a lean 220 pounds, he could seemingly do it all, including things only so many college players his size were doing at the time. He was just as capable of dribbling and driving as he was posting up. He was a strong passer with excellent court vision. Eventually, he became a reliable and high-volume shooter, making 35.8% of his 3-pointers as a sophomore in 2007-08. Perhaps foreshadowing his future dalliance into mixed martial arts, in which he owns an undefeated career record, Jokic embraced physicality in his three seasons with the Titans.

“He had a little different style back then,” Smith said. “He was 6-6, could face up and could drive you. He’s just not 7-foot, 6-11. If he was, he’d be just like his brother, I swear.”

The situation around Jokic, however, soon changed. Two months into his sophomore season in 2008, Detroit’s coach, Perry Watson, took an indefinite leave of absence for an undisclosed medical condition. Two months later, Watson resigned from his post and was replaced by Indiana assistant Ray McCallum. As many coaches do, McCallum brought in his own system and identity, one that had the Titans playing at a faster pace, but taking far fewer 3s, which severely hampered a player like Jokic who primarily shot from distance. In McCallum’s first season in 2008-09, 3s accounted for just 23.9% of Detroit’s shots according to KenPom.com, ranking it 330th among 344 Division I teams at the time. The previous season, 37.1% of the Titans’ field goal attempts were from beyond the arc.

McCallum also brought in two players, Indiana transfer Keeling and junior-college transfer Thomas Kennedy, who were both 6-foot-7 forwards and ate up some of the shots and playing time Jokic had previously enjoyed. What resulted from that was what Smith, who was an assistant under McCallum from 2008-16, described “a little bit” of a falling out between player and coach.

“When somebody is ahead of you, you’re mad at the coach that’s playing him,” Smith said. “It’s just part of the deal, I think. It wasn’t like he wasn’t competing because he was.”

“You could tell he was bothered by it,” Smith later added. “He wanted to hoop. I get it. I was the same way. I transferred from Bowling Green to a Division II school. If you’re competitive like his family is, you want to play. He just got caught in a little bit of a numbers game.”

An interview request for McCallum did not receive a response from a spokesperson from Tulane, where McCallum has been an assistant coach for the past four seasons.

A new start

When Jokic opted to transfer and play his final college season elsewhere, Smith and others worked to help him find a new home. 

After running through his mental rolodex, Smith reached out to Tim Cluess, who had led C.W. Post to a 30-1 record and an appearance in the Division II Elite Eight the previous season. 

You’re going to love this kid, Smith recalled telling Cluess. You’re going to love him.

His inclination was correct. Cluess was intrigued. C.W. Post’s success hinged in part on Cluess’ broader basketball philosophy, which employed a high-scoring, wide-open system in which players’ skills, not their size, had the most important role in determining what position they played.

In Jokic, he saw a player who had been miscast and pigeonholed as a low-post presence when his game was something more multi-dimensional.

“I saw him play and realized he could be a more productive face-up guy with trying to get his back to the basket a little bit and working on that part of his game, but he was much better knocking down a 3-point shot and taking the ball off the dribble,” Cluess told me. “He was like a lower version of his brother now. He just loved that idea of being able to play that way.”

Part of Jokic’s lone season at the Long Island school was spent regaining whatever confidence he had lost coming off the bench for three seasons at Detroit.

“He was still trying to find himself and figure things out,” Cluess said. “That may have been a product of not having success prior to coming to us, that he was a little unsure of himself and who he was as a player. Hearing stories about his older brother and stories he would tell me about being back home – what went on there and how tough life could be – you knew he had toughness in him.”

Eventually, he not only adjusted to the larger role he had and the increased freedom it afforded, but he embraced it. After losing the vast majority of its roster from the previous season’s Elite Eight team, C.W. Post went 23-6 and averaged 80.7 points per game. Jokic had a large hand in that success, averaging 15.6 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game while making a team-best 36.8% of his 3s and starting all 29 games. At the end of the season, he was a first-team all-conference selection.

Following that season, Cluess was named the head coach at Iona, where he made six NCAA Tournaments in nine seasons before health-related issues prompted him to resign in 2019. Early in his Iona tenure, Jokic, who was working as a personal trainer at the time, surprised Cluess by showing up to one of his old coach’s games. It was indicative of the person Cluess quickly grew to know well in his lone season coaching him.

“He was nice, respectable, fun-loving, a good sense of humor, trustworthy,” Cluess said. “They were all of the good things you’d want in your son. To me, Shuma was all of those things wrapped up in one package.”

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