Denver Nuggets Owner Josh Kroenke on Drafting Nikola Jokic and Watching His Rise to MVP
00:00:00.000 | When did you realize we had, you know, something special with, uh, Nicola?
00:00:04.760 | Did you, did you know that early on?
00:00:06.700 | I know Nerkich was here at the time.
00:00:08.020 | Yeah, yeah.
00:00:08.760 | That was a, it's a, it's a funny story about, about Nicola.
00:00:11.960 | Um, and if anybody tells you they knew they are lying through their teeth.
00:00:15.880 | I didn't know.
00:00:16.920 | The first year I got drafted, I went to training camp and I had no idea.
00:00:21.560 | Like just cause you know, he treats a game different than practice.
00:00:25.000 | So I'm seeing Mason Plumlee and Nicola go at it.
00:00:26.960 | I'm like, wait, why does Nicola start over Mason?
00:00:29.400 | Like, I remember that was my thought process.
00:00:31.080 | So yeah, yeah.
00:00:32.760 | Tell me that story.
00:00:33.520 | How did you?
00:00:33.960 | So yeah, Yoke, Yoke is a, is a funny story.
00:00:36.600 | Um, I remember sitting with, um, our former president of basketball ops and GM
00:00:41.160 | at the time, uh, Tim Connolly and Arturis Karnaschovas that one of them now runs
00:00:45.160 | the Timberwolves.
00:00:45.760 | One of them now runs the Chicago Bulls.
00:00:47.400 | Um, but they were in our front office at the time.
00:00:50.840 | They're like, Hey, there's this guy that you should, you should see on tape.
00:00:53.520 | Cause we want to, we want him to keep his name in the draft and he, but he
00:00:57.640 | wants to stay over in Europe for one more year.
00:00:59.400 | And, you know, we're going, we're in a phase at the time where we wanted as many
00:01:03.240 | young players as we could get and to try to see what we could grow.
00:01:06.800 | And, um, so I was actually like, why, why does he want to stay over in Europe one
00:01:12.920 | more year?
00:01:13.400 | And both Tim and Arturis were like, it's just, it's best for his development.
00:01:16.800 | And we think that there's a skill level there that, that could be interesting.
00:01:19.720 | Um, but I remember them showing me on tape and Nicola's wearing like this, their
00:01:25.360 | colors were like pink and blue and, and Nicola couldn't jump over a phone book,
00:01:30.080 | but he'd catch these balls and he'd throw these passes that you were like, I don't
00:01:35.720 | know how that's going to translate, but that player's basketball IQ is obviously
00:01:40.000 | off the charts.
00:01:40.600 | And, um, and so we, we drafted him, he stayed over for one more year and then he
00:01:46.360 | came over in the summer of 2015.
00:01:48.280 | And my dad actually has really good stories about, um, being down in a weight
00:01:52.640 | room, you know, early in the morning that summer and Nicola would be in there every
00:01:56.040 | morning with his two brothers and they'd be beaten on him, like kind of before the
00:02:00.040 | coaches would even come in and he'd be in there.
00:02:01.880 | But over time, I think Nicola cleaned up, he cleaned up his diet.
00:02:05.440 | Um, he understood what it took to be a professional.
00:02:07.960 | And, you know, you referenced Yusef Nurkic, who was another, another really
00:02:11.680 | good young player that we had on our roster at the time.
00:02:13.800 | And, uh, we couldn't quite tell what, what to do with both of them because Yusef, I
00:02:20.360 | think, had made second team All-Rookie, um, and Nicola was coming over.
00:02:24.760 | And so we had a very established center and, but we knew that they both had really
00:02:29.320 | good hands, really good skills.
00:02:30.920 | And, uh, the, the, the thing that was unfortunate is the league was trending.
00:02:35.880 | That was when the Warriors were on their ascension and, uh, the league was trending
00:02:39.880 | to this small ball, you know, shooting everywhere and even more extreme than it
00:02:45.960 | is now, almost.
00:02:47.200 | It was like, everyone's wanted to try to be the Warriors like almost overnight.
00:02:50.920 | And you couldn't play Nicola and, and, and Yusef together.
00:02:54.480 | You had two seven footers that were incredibly skilled and very unselfish
00:02:58.080 | guys, but trying to play them together, while it did present its advantages at
00:03:02.320 | certain points, it was, it was tough.
00:03:03.840 | It was a tough for them to cover whenever you got, you know, kind of almost four
00:03:07.200 | guards out there moving around and sink.
00:03:09.200 | And it's a tough defensive cover.
00:03:10.760 | Um, so we had to really kind of put our heads together on what we wanted to do.
00:03:14.920 | And fortunately by the time, um, after, after Nicola's first, first season, I
00:03:21.000 | think he made first team all rookie.
00:03:22.440 | Um, and then we were halfway into the second year and, uh, we were really
00:03:28.760 | realizing that we couldn't, we had to pick, we had to choose because they're
00:03:32.280 | both starting level centers.
00:03:34.040 | And, and I think Yusef's contract was coming up in about a year.
00:03:37.720 | And so we were having our analytics group run all the different numbers of how to
00:03:43.560 | compare the two and what to look for.
00:03:45.560 | And all of a sudden this, this comparison comes through.
00:03:48.480 | And fortunately we had enough data at the time to be able to really put together
00:03:53.040 | per 36 minutes and compare different things.
00:03:56.040 | And so, uh, this comparison comes through and it's player A and player B and it
00:04:01.800 | was, uh, they're in their second season.
00:04:04.120 | And the only, the only difference of the two is that player A is two years older
00:04:10.080 | than player B at the time of their second year in the NBA.
00:04:12.800 | Player A just entered the league later and you could clearly see that player B's
00:04:17.680 | numbers were better in really every category.
00:04:20.240 | Um, and so I was like, okay, I was like, I'm going to guess that player B is
00:04:25.000 | Nicola and they're like, yep, you're right.
00:04:27.800 | Player B is Nicola.
00:04:28.680 | And I'm like, all right, well, then who are we talking about with player where is
00:04:30.880 | this, there's some sort of comparison with Nurk or is there some sort of comparison
00:04:34.320 | with someone else in the league?
00:04:35.200 | And they're like, player A is Larry Bird.
00:04:39.760 | And I was like, oh, like you looked at the per 36 and so they, that, that was when I
00:04:46.600 | think all of us kind of looked at each other, like, because you know, sometimes
00:04:49.800 | with, when you, when you talk to like a basketball purist, even when you, to your
00:04:53.320 | point, Nicola's, his skillset and the way that he plays, you know, the eye test, he
00:04:58.280 | doesn't jump out at you right away, but when you watch it over time and you
00:05:01.920 | understand what he's doing and how he's affecting a game, it really jumps out at
00:05:06.800 | you. And so that was when, and that was in, that was like the first week of
00:05:11.000 | December and I think we were on like a four or five game skid at the time.
00:05:15.040 | And then Tim and I wound up on the phone.
00:05:16.360 | I was like, Tim, I was like, I'm never going to tell anyone who to play, any
00:05:19.640 | coach what to do, but if we're going to pick one, tell him to put Nicola in and
00:05:24.680 | we, we gotta, we gotta roll with it.
00:05:25.880 | And, and then that was the famous, you know, the next night or the night after
00:05:30.880 | was, uh, the date was that December or something when that was when Yoke went
00:05:35.960 | into the starting lineup and never, never came out, never came out.
00:05:39.680 | It was in Dallas, I think.
00:05:40.680 | Yeah.
00:05:41.180 | Yeah.
00:05:41.840 | I have unlimited Nicola stories too, about the cleaning up the diet and stuff.
00:05:45.840 | My first couple of years, I mean, he cared about basketball, but you know, he
00:05:48.920 | would go home to Serbia in the summer and come back out of shape.
00:05:51.800 | I've seen him progress every year, even from MVP year to MVP year, he's somehow
00:05:56.640 | progressing.
00:05:57.240 | So you guys obviously made the right choice, man.