It Took All of America’s Basketball Might to Beat Nikola Jokic and Serbia

The United States and Serbia played what basically everyone agrees is one of the greatest basketball games ever yesterday, as the Americans erased a seventeen-point first-half deficit and a thirteen-point Serbian lead at the start of the fourth quarter to squeak out perhaps the most dramatic victory in the history of Olympic basketball and move on to the Final.

Steph Curry proved why he is the greatest shooter ever, LeBron James demonstrated why he is an all-time Swiss army knife, and Kevin Durant enshrined himself as the greatest Olympic scorer of all time. It took the best effort that America’s big guns had, all to beat a frisky Serbian team with a stifling (first-half) defense and the best player on the planet who is the official athlete of Splinter, Nikola Jokic, as named by me, Splinter’s entirely unbiased Denver-based Editor-in-Chief.

Look at how happy these guys are. All over finally vanquishing the guy so many of them can’t beat in America!

Photo by RvS.Media/Robert Hradil/Getty Images

Photo by RvS.Media/Robert Hradil/Getty Images

Photo by Christina Pahnke – sampics/Getty Images

Dropping the bit for a second, it is very cool watching this Big Three era of USA Basketball close with this kind of drama. I will return to my Denver sports shit talking in the second half of this blog, but LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant deserve a hero’s send-off to their international careers. They oversaw a generation that advanced basketball to heights not seen before and etched themselves among the titans of the sport. The Paris Olympics are widely expected to be their last, and all three plus Jokic’s MVP rival Joel Embiid are the biggest reasons that Team USA is moving on to the Final tomorrow against host country France and the basketball alien poised to take over the next generation, Victor Wembanyama.

I turned on yesterday’s semifinal genuinely wondering who I would be rooting for. The very first Remembering a Play in Splinter history was me guffawing over Vince Carter dunking seven-footer Frederic Weis into a different dimension in the 2000 Olympics, and have noted that I am a Dream Team baby and how that generation of stars influenced my perception of basketball while my brain was still developing. They made me fall in love with this sport, and despite all my demonstrated issues with American governance, I am a full-blown Team USA mark once every four years because of them.

Until yesterday.

I can confirm that Denver is now the Western Republic of Serbia. I began the game a neutral and mid-way through the first quarter I and everyone I knew was learning the Serbian national anthem. Some, like sports’ greatest poster of all time who I will get to in a second, charge us with being “cornballs” for rooting for our guy over America, but it’s deeper than that.

The Dream Team made me love basketball as a kid, and that fueled me up until a Taco Bell commercial in 2014 where I discovered true basketball love. For anyone who watched Nikola Jokic’s rookie season, it was obvious that the man had a special offensive talent that made the Nuggets worth watching even if they weren’t very good yet. The question was whether he could elevate his defense and conditioning to NBA levels, and if there was a position for him in a league where the four increasingly plays in space he cannot.

Nikola Jokic did all that and more. This journey watching him and Jamal Murray build the greatest Nuggets team ever from the ashes of the Carmelo Anthony era has been one of the most rewarding sports experiences of my life. It’s rare that sports suffering has a payoff, and the feeling of joy that Nikola Jokic evokes is unlike any other athlete I have watched.

Rooting for Serbia was rooting for the deep bond with basketball I have forged while watching Jokic prove every single hater and doubter wrong en route to being the best player alive and making my podunk little nothingburger team truly matter for the first time in its 48-year NBA history. The same logic that led me to fall down the Team USA rabbit hole in 1992 led me to get Serbia-pilled in 2024. My love for the game exceeds my patriotism, and Nikola Jokic is my bond with basketball embodied in human form.

I wanted this so bad, man. I rooted for Serbia like it was Game 7 against the Minnesota Timberwolves from the spring all over again, and admittedly I was probably still processing some of the sports trauma from attending that waking nightmare. When Bogdan Bogdanović hit a three to put Serbia up fifteen points late in the second quarter, I went ballistic. I believed. I was ready to get hurt.

I knew the U.S. would come back eventually because, duh look who’s on the team, but I had hope that the proven Nuggets strategy of spamming the “Jokic in the post” button in crunch time would work yet again, and have thoughts about Serbia’s coaching in the waning minutes of that semifinal that are still not fit for print. That fourth-quarter run to win the game by the United States will go down in history as one of the best examples of American basketball excellence that you will ever see, but like most historic comebacks, it had a little help.

Serbia adopted the Nuggets as their team, and yesterday afternoon I fully embraced them as my own. It was also a wonderful story to watch Nikola Jokic throw everything he had into a basketball defense of his country after last off-season’s firestorm. He was actually on shaky terms with the passionate fan base of the Serbian national team for skipping out on the 2023 FIBA World Cup because he needed a full offseason of rest after winning an NBA championship. I would hope for Jokic’s sake (and anyone who dares talk trash to his very aggro brothers) that yesterday’s legendary game settled any hard feelings around that decision and enshrined him as a true Serbian basketball legend for coming the closest anyone has to slaying this generation’s unbeatable international basketball goliath.

Let’s Beef with Some Basketball Gods

To all you nuggets fans, nobody gives a fuck who yall lames believe is the best player in the league, players got major respect for Jok, we don’t worship him like yall do but most are in awe of his brilliance. Trolling you cornballs for rooting against us is apart of the game.… https://t.co/JVwxSi0eJD

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) August 9, 2024

Screw you KD, I am a cornball. I love basketball. I love watching Nikola Jokic. I love this international alliance my city has established. I love winning championships with the most perfect form of basketball ever played, especially when my team beats you in your own building en route to winning that championship. Talk all the trash you want about us turning heel on America, but you’ve got nothing to pin on us Western Serbian Republic Nuggets fans outside of yesterday’s Team USA comeback victory.

Your hatred fuels my happiness, Kevin. You woke up at five a.m. to talk shit to my city. Knowing that beating my basketball deity makes the greatest players of this generation THIS happy is a gold medal unto itself. You can never own us because every attack just makes us even stronger.

You and everyone else around the world should thank LeBron James for going into generational god-mode on defense in the second half because if our guy had pulled that historic upset off, we never would have shut up. I would have created a new weekly feature at Splinter just for you called KD Haterade of the Week detailing each missed shot in the Game 2 in Denver I attended where you went 10-27 from the field and 2-12 from three-point land. I can still hear your bricks clanging off the rim every night in my dreams.

And LeBron is too smart to say anything right now and poke the bear—he knows who his daddy is—I’m sure he and Anthony Davis are still seeing Jamal Murray hit a shot(s) in their nightmares.

And Steph? Well…I’ve actually got nothing for Steph. He wholeheartedly owns us. Beating the Nuggets and ending the George Karl era while stealing Andre Iguodala from the soon to be Western Serbian Republic is the Steph origin story, and between Curry going nine of fourteen from three-point territory yesterday (lmao) and saving Team USA’s bacon, plus his playoff sweep over Jokic a few years back…yeah. Damnit.

So congratulations Team USA. I will be enthusiastically jumping back on the bandwagon tomorrow, both because Nikola Jokic proved he’s the only thing that could ever knock me off of it, and also because honestly, I am very clearly still processing Minnesota’s Game 7 upset in Denver and desperately need to see Rudy Gobert run off the court while losing by forty.

I love/kinda hate you KD, I really wish you didn’t hit that crunch time dagger yesterday that basically ended the game, but if you could hit a few more of those tomorrow and at least give us another four years of basketball supremacy before Victor Wembanyama shuts both you and I up for good, I promise I’ll be singing your praises and wearing the good ‘ol red white and blue come Monday.