Nikola Jokic has been the star of the show in the NBA over the last month or so as he has stamped his authority on these playoffs.
Jokic presents such a difficult challenge for the opposition because of his unique playstyle, and it turns out his favorite player growing up was another rather unique individual, Tracy McGrady.
“His favorite player was Tracy McGrady,” Mike Breen said. “His favorite NBA player back in the day, because he couldn’t believe how somebody McGrady’s size could do all these things like dribble, shoot from the perimeter, drive to the basket.”
McGrady stood at 6’8″ and as Jokic said, back in the day, you didn’t see players of that size being able to do basically everything on offense. His absolute peak was perhaps the 2002-03 season, where McGrady led the league in scoring at 32.1 PPG while also averaging 6.5 RPG, 5.5 APG, 1.7 SPG, and 0.8 BPG while shooting 38.6% from beyond the arc. Had it not been for injuries, who knows what McGrady could have achieved?
T-Mac also had a lot of praise for Jokic recently, stating he has never seen anything like the Serbian and added that he’d have loved to play with him.
Nikola Jokic Spoke About The Players He Modeled His Game After
Considering how Mcgrady was the polar opposite of him when it came to athleticism, modeling his game after him wasn’t really an option for Jokic. He instead modeled it after the likes of Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic at first, and later on, it was the likes of Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki.
Jokic is now trying to do something that both Duncan and Nowitzki did, lead their team to a title. One can certainly make the case he’s had a greater postseason run than either of those two legends ever did, having averaged 30.1 PPG, 13.3 RPG, 9.8 APG, 1.1 SPG, and 1.0 BPG so far.
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