Đoković and Jokić: the heroes of our time

Written for Kosovo Online by Srđan Garčević, founder of The Nutshell Times

In the early 1990s in Serbia, kids born in the late 80s were pushed en masse by their parents into two sports: tennis and basketball.

The popularity of both was due to the successes of Yugoslav athletes – Slobodan Živojinović, Goran Ivanišević, Monika Seleš, Vlade Divac, Dražen Petrović - as well as the fact that we have one of the tallest populations in the world.

Both sports were considered good career options, especially as the country suffered heavily under sanctions. They were tickets to good colleges and scholarships abroad and then, for the few genuinely talented, hardworking, and lucky kids, to fabulous wealth and fame. Even though our parents were well aware that successful professional sporting careers were a risky bet and often were relatively expensive given the meager earnings, they seemed sensible at the time when professionals in Serbia were earning around 100 USD a month, and their assets were under constant risk of being either inflated away or lost in a war.

As an only son of a formerly promising tennis and basketball player who decided to turn towards a white-collar job (and regretted the choice), my pre-teens were filled with various attempts to make me a star athlete. Although my lack of hand-eye coordination and disinterest in physical activity soon made it evident to my father that I would never be a new Divac or Ivanišević, I often found myself surrounded by boys and girls, or rather - their families, who invested heavily into them “making it big" in the sports world. Back then, in dingy changing rooms and sports center cafes, there was always talk of debts that would be repaid after a scholarship or a sponsorship came and how fantastic these kids’ careers will be.

Although I eventually took the nerdy route away from sports, I reencountered this group when I was applying to study aboard. Belgrade’s SAT prep schools and US college application centers were full of these youngsters, whose families still looked at them as potential future primary breadwinners. Happily, many did “make it”: they got scholarships for US colleges and ventured into decent careers - some as athletes, some as coaches, and some moving into banking, consulting, and other white-collar jobs, using their hard-earned sporting discipline and drive. Some of them even returned to Serbia, bringing experiences and capital they managed to mass.  

Needless to say, it was an arduous path. These young men and women worked hard throughout their youth to fulfill not just their ambitions but also to make sure their parents and siblings could afford decent lives.

Their safety net was often non-existent, destroyed by various misgivings that fell upon Serbia and its people.

Despite their hard upbringing, many felt the need to stand up for Serbia, a country that, for better or worse, shaped them into life’s warriors.

Some of the only memories of national pride growing up were our sporting successes. All of us remember when our basketball squad won gold at the EuroBasket championship in 1995, their first after a ban for all of our athletes from sporting competitions. The victory at the FIBA 2002 World Championship in Indianapolis felt like a catharsis after our political losses.

We took pride in the harrowing life stories of our idols, such as Peja Stojaković – a refugee from Croatia who made it big in the NBA and also defended our national colors. I remember many of us staying up throughout the night to see if he and Vlade Divac would at some point achieve our dream and take Sacramento Kings to the NBA finals, which they, to our disappointment, never did.

Their successes were also the only way we could see “our boys” doing well in the world despite our country’s somewhat tricky image.  

We were aware that more overt attempts for our athletes to tell the world about their experiences of hardships that befell us came at a considerable cost, so doing well and showing that we could still win was enough. Infamously, our star swimmer, Milorad Čavić, was suspended from a 2008 competition simply for wanting to accept a medal in a shirt that said that “Kosovo is Serbia” - something that our constitution and majority of UN members consider a simple fact.

Then, in the early 2010s came Novak Đoković, the greatest member of my generation, the very embodiment of our struggles and ambitions, an epitome of not only sporting but human greatness.

His perseverance both on the court and in fighting for what he thinks is right made his life difficult in a world that started prioritizing conformity over objective quality, but it gave us a glimpse of true greatness. Indeed, he showed us that it is only when you are true to yourself and in touch with your roots that you can truly achieve anything significant, even in our increasingly Harrison Bergeron-esque culture, where intrusive and bizarre standards are constantly propagated.

A few years later, Nikola Jokić, in his own way, redefined how basketball can be played. He fulfilled our childhood dreams of seeing a team led by a Serb win the NBA (sadly, we are still waiting for our national team to return to the heights of the early 2000s). He also affirmed the image of a fun-loving, authentic Serbian who does not take himself too seriously but is deeply committed to his family, community, and sport over accolades and sponsorships.

The fact that both of them are now dominating their respective sports is the vindication of the hard times we went through. It seems that, indeed, hard times create strong men and given that the world seems to be slipping into ever more perilous waters, Đoković and Jokić should serve as beacons of greatness to the whole world.

More than thirty years on, my stomach still turns at the heavy smell of sweat and mold in the dingy sports centers of 1990s Serbia, and I cannot but feel proud of the men and women who managed to persevere in those conditions and make themselves genuinely magnificent.