3 NBA angles to watch at EuroBasket
Can Nikola Jokic achieve peak international glory? Can Luka Doncic avenge his high-profile failures? Has Dennis Schroder made Germany a basketball superpower they never were?
As someone who follows European basketball only when there's a top-tier prospect like Victor Wembanyama on the way, finding deep intrigue in EuroBasket every four years isn't super straightforward. Yes, once a game's on, it's basketball – high-level basketball, in some cases – and enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment is available. But as a basketball blogger for the past 20 (!) years, it's hard to turn the analytic, conclusion-drawing part of the brain off. So going into EuroBasket, I wanted to develop some ideas about what has meaning for an NBA-centric fan.
Here are the three angles such a fan could focus on.
1. Nikola Jokic's Best Chance at International Glory
Serbia has remained an international powerhouse for the past decade, finishing second in the 2016 Olympic tournament, EuroBasket 2017 and the 2023 World Cup and third in the 2024 Olympics. You'll notice there are no gold medals there, though, which is different from the previous golden age of Serbian basketball, where the team racked up three EuroBasket golds and two World Championships over seven years from 1995 to 2002.
Meanwhile, for the first time ever, Serbia has the consensus best basketball player in the world in Nikola Jokic.
This is the one ding on Jokic's otherworldly resumé: he does not have a major international championship to his name, and in fact his commitment to the Serbian national team has been in question over the years. A young Jokic helped get Serbia to silver in Rio in 2016, but the team (led by Jokic and Bogdan Bogdanovic along with some older players) flamed out of the 2019 World Cup and EuroBasket 2022 (with Jokic then the clear leader of the team with NBA MVPs in his pocket). He skipped the 2023 World Cup to celebrate his NBA title – Serbia did fine anyways but still fell short, losing to Germany in the title game. And then he and his team fell short last summer in one of the greatest Olympic games in memory.
Participation in EuroBasket this summer a year after leading Serbia to bronze in the Paris Olympics should fully assuage questions about his commitment, but gold at this tournament would do a whole lot more for his legacy.
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