Star center for the Denver Nuggets, Nikola Jokić comes from a supportive family. Let’s meet his parents and his two siblings.
Denver Nuggets star center Nikola Jokić has his work cut out for him as his team faces off against the Miami Heat in the 2023 NBA finals.
However, regardless of the outcome, Nikola has undoubtedly proven himself as a Nuggets MVP given his impressive playing stats.
So off the court, what is Nikola’s family life like? Were his parents also majorly into sports as well?
Here’s everything we know about Nikola’s parents and more.
SOURCE: NIKOLA JOKIĆ FACEBOOK
Who are Nikola Jokić’s parents?
There isn’t much that’s publicly known about Nikola’s mother. However, we do know a bit more about Nikola’s father. Did his father play basketball professionally too?
According to Wikipedia, Nikola’s father, Branislav, wasn’t a basketball player. His chosen job profession? An agricultural engineer.
So, is anything known about Nikola’s mother? What we do know thanks to a report from Heavy is that when Nikola was younger, he lived with his mother, father, his two brothers, and their grandmother in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Sombor, Serbia.
However, there’s no official report about the name of Nikola’s mother, but it’s understandable that Nikola would want to keep parts of his life private off the court!
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Nikola is an interesting name — what is the NBA player’s ethnicity?
Nikola has Serbian ethnicity, given the fact that he was born (and raised) in Sombor. The eastern European NBA star told Bleacher Report back in 2017, “After my career is over, I’m gonna go back there … It’s super slow — not too much going on — but you have everything. You have a canal, nature; you can get peace of mind outside the city. I just like to be someplace where I know how to drive a car without navigation. How I say, no place like home? Something like that.”
The youngest of three brothers (Nikola’s brothers are Nemanja and Strahinja), Nikola never anticipated that he was destined for a life in the NBA.
Even when Nikola was drafted into the NBA, he stayed humble. Per the same interview from Bleacher Report, his brother Nemanja called Nikola, who was asleep in Serbia at the time his life changed forever. Nemanja joked from NYC, “You got drafted in the NBA! How do you sleep right now?”
Who are Nikola Jokić’s brothers?
Nikola’s oldest brother is Strahinja, and his passion for basketball was a huge inspiration for Nikola’s own journey into the sport. Strahinja is 6 feet, 8 inches tall, and he played basketball in Europe for much of his life. Strahinja is more than 10 years older than Nikola, which means that Nikola got to watch his brother compete across Europe while he was still quite young.
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Strahinja was not the star that Nikola eventually became, and once it became clear that Nikola’s talents would surpass his own, he glided into the role of a supporter of his brother’s ambitions. Since Nikola joined the NBA, Strahinja has been a regular presence at his games. In addition to his passion for his brother’s career, though, Strahinja also has a more problematic past.
In 2019, Strahinja was arrested on charges of assault and was accused of choking and pushing a woman in his apartment while drunk. He allegedly trapped this woman in his apartment and threatened to choke her until she passed out. Strahinja ultimately pled guilty to two misdemeanor charges as a result of the assault, and the more major charges against him were dropped. He then received a deferred sentence.
Nemanja, the middle brother in the family, also played basketball at a high level and even played at a Division I school for college. Although he didn’t perform all that well at the collegiate level, Nemanja has gone on to pursue a career as an MMA fighter in more recent years. At 6 feet, 6 inches, Nemanja is also somehow the shortest of the three brothers.