Nikola Jokic Was Refreshingly Chill About Winning an NBA Title

As an American, any trip abroad doubles as a reminder that other countries are much more relaxed about work than we are. The bit about Europeans taking a whole summer off to work on their tan while we take a half day for open heart surgery has been meme’d to death, but the sentiment remains: Americans have been conditioned to work ourselves as hard as we can, burnout be damned. 

We do not have to worry about this with Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets’ Serbian sensation and newly-minted NBA champion. The man just completed a historic postseason heater—he became the first player ever to lead the playoffs in points, assists, and rebounds—and ended it by treating the NBA Finals like a corporate retreat that, while nice, prevented him from his main love: being at home. Within an hour after being presented both the championship trophy and his Finals MVP award, clips of the big man being unusually dismissive about the whole thing began making the rounds. 

As the confetti was still falling and he stood on the court in front of a rapturous Denver crowd, he delivered a business-like, “The job is done. We can go home now.” Except, it isn’t—at least, not quite. Here he is expressing true dismay when learning that he has to stick around until Thursday for the championship parade, rather than boarding a flight back to Sombor. (He later explained to an NBA TV panel that he wants to get back to Europe to see his horse race.) During the traditional locker room celebration, Jokic showed as much enthusiasm for spraying champagne as you or I would for sending an email. Again: this man just won Finals MVP following a series that pretty undeniably makes him one of the 25 best players ever. Most of us would be losing our shit. Not Jokic—a pillar of the work to live, don’t live to work mentality. It is unclear if he will think about basketball at all until he’s forced to report to Nuggets’ training camp in September. It was almost like you could see him toggle his out-of-office reply on during the postgame festivities.

This is such a drastic departure from the emotions we’re used to seeing after a championship. Whether you side with Michael Jordan or LeBron James in the GOAT debate—by the way, there are very few things I can imagine interest Jokic less than discussing his legacy—neither Mike nor LeBron were too cool to act like a championship wasn’t a big deal. Both men famously wept after the final buzzer of some of their Finals romps. Kevin Garnett, meanwhile, gave us a moment for the ages with “Anything is possible!” Even the more reserved champions, think Kobe Bryant or Steph Curry, have gushed about their immense desire to be great. Comparing Kobe’s mamba mentality to Jokic’s whole demeanor is a fun peek into just how many disparate paths there are to the top. To hear Jokic talk about how he thinks about his job is to realize that he has his priorities in order. Hooping is a job, and he’s astonishingly good at it—but it’s not consuming his life the way it has other basketball deities. He even went as far as to suggest that nobody actually likes their job.

As any good therapist will tell you, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating your accomplishments! We salute Jack Grealish for going full lad’s holiday after Manchester City won the Champions League. But there is something aspirational about watching someone reach the height of their very public profession only to be more or less unmoved by it. Jokic has this whole work-life balance thing figured out, and then some. It’s not like he’s just soullessly clocking in and clocking out, either—there’s a high level of care here, but he is much more workman-like about it than most. It was hard not to smile when Jokic lumbered into teammate Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s postgame presser and playfully put an end to it so he could take his obligatory turn at the podium. Jokic poured a beer on Caldwell-Pope’s head and then took the chair from him, conveying, “Hey, this was fun. But I’d like to leave, and you’re preventing me from doing that.” As Barbara Howard from Abbott Elementary once said, “I do my work. I go home.”

Thus concludes an oddball NBA Finals that introduced the world to a uniquely wacky cast of characters. Not to be outdone by Jokic’s aloofness, Jimmy Butler said during the series that if he makes the Hall of Fame he probably wouldn’t attend the ceremony. Tremendous. This was only the second Finals since 2006 that did not feature LeBron, Steph, or Kobe. In their place, we got a working-class hero that would rather be doing anything but work—ironically becoming a legend in his field. The lesson to be learned here, America, is to spend more time on the things you love (in Jokic’s case, horses and video games) and less time obsessing over work. You might just find yourself on a Rocky Mountain high.