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Welcome back to BASKETBALLWEATHER, where the NBA season has officially started and we can officially begin to light blunts in the jacuzzi and party. Lots to celebrate in this first week of action, including two prime time Lakers games showcasing some of the team’s new players, a masterpiece performance by Kristaps Porzingis, a pterodactyl sighting in the form of a French phenom named Victor Wemby, a vintage KD showing, and just another day in the office for the NBA’s best player and ranking Finals MVP Nikola Jokic.
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Hat tip to my boy Marty, friend and reader of BBW for sending me the article that inspired this piece. The basic premise, which most casuals of the NBA know by now is that Nikola Jokic doesn’t give a fuck about playing basketball. I mean he cares in the sense that he puts in the effort to play and does his best to perform at the highest level possible, but he doesn’t eat/sleep/drink/shit the NBA, say, the way someone like Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, or Lebron James does.
I find this very refreshing.
It’s very American to be passionate about what you do. It’s the ethos I was raised on, not necessarily by my own parents, but by the culture at large. Be passionate about what you do. When you’re passionate, work doesn’t really feel like work, etc etc, there’s a million Hallmark cards in this vein, and they all basically say a version of the same thing: When you’re passionate your life is going to be so awesome!
Now don’t get me wrong
Being passionate about your job is (probably?) better than not being passionate, but what if it’s not the only thing that matters? What if, like Nikola Jokic, you’re just good, great, or in his case, amazing at, something, and that thing you’re amazing at happens to also be something that’s lucrative. Is it so bad to approach it the way Jokic does, that is to say, clinically? Emotionlessly? Dispassionately?
Are there advantages to this approach?
Lest we forget this is a man who prefers gambling on horses than doing anything basketball related, likes alone time more than fame, and wants to rush back to Serbia as soon as the Finals are over, borderline annoyed that he has to attend the massive fucking championship parade they’re throwing in his honor.
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We’re taught that we need to be passionate about what we do in order to be successful, but in Jokic’s case the opposite is true. If he was doing what we have been taught to do he might be farming goats in Serbia, and not making fifty million dollars a year.
It’s a sacrifice, I’m sure, for Jokic.
It can’t be easy to leave his home and his family to play professional basketball thousands of miles away for eight months a year, but he’s good at it, and so he sacrifices for the thing he’s good at in order to reach his potential, even if the thing he’s good at isn’t his favorite thing in the world to do. What makes Jokic special is that he does’t just phone it in either, he has the mental fortitude to put in the work, and then do everything possible to reach the apex of his potential despite the fact that he’s not passionate about it. That’s rare.
That’s the complete opposite of most NBA players. Some who are passionate but nowhere near as gifted as Jokic, and some of who are gifted but coasting on their talents (hello James Harden!). With Jokic, we have a player for the first time in the modern NBA era who is a Top 3 player in the league, and who doesn’t feel the feels for sport.
He’s fine just clocking in and treating it like a day job.
It would be the equivalent of Drake being like, yeah it’s fun but whatever, I just do it because I get out of bed and can, otherwise I’d rather be eating Ramen. Or Taylor Swift writing great songs, and then telling her fans it’s not her favorite thing to do.
Imagine if Martin Scorsese made movies but wished he could be at home playing video games instead.
Would it change anything about the movies he released?
No.
What Jokic shows is that passion isn’t necessary to be elite. It’s not good or bad, it’s just a characteristic. There’s something radical there that subverts a lot of what we’re led to believe in the United States.
The American passion industry is kind of full of shit.
Passion is important, sure, but throw a rock from where I’m sitting right now in West Adams, and you’ll hit a bunch of “passionate people” trying to do one thing or the other that they’re not that good at. DJs, actors, musicians, what have you, all drinking the juice of the passion industrial complex.
Delusion is built on the back of passion, and there’s nothing wrong with delusion, as long as its not hurting anyone, but it’s probably not the best way to reach your potential.
The curious case of Nikola Jokic teaches us that, and shows another path forward. There’s room in life for your passions, you can sing songs, farm goats, or whatever else you want to do, but passion alone is not enuff to excel.
As Radiohead eloquently put it in the song ‘There, There’
Just 'cause you feel it
Doesn't mean it's thereJust 'cause you feel it
Doesn't mean it's there
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