Nikola Jokic walked to his locker and immediately noticed something was very clearly wrong: there were pieces of paper taped all over the inside and outside. He walked up to get a closer look; when he saw what was printed on the papers, his heart was filled with a mixture of sadness and disappointment.
On each sheet was a computer printout of Nikola’s own face, but all of them had been defaced in various ways with a permanent marker. On some were written hurtful words such as “Go back to smelly Europe”, “All girls hate Nikola and his small penis”, or “I hate Nikola Jokic”. On others, Nikola’s face had been drawn over to give him cross-eyes, or devil horns, or a penis entering his mouth in a crude representation of fellatio.
The sadness had given way to anger. Nikola had to know which of his juvenile teammates had pulled this cruel prank on him, although he had a hunch of who it was. He ripped down the crudest drawing of them all, on which was written the caption “All Nuggets players despise Nikola Jokic”, and held it up for all his teammates to see. “Hey, who drew these?” he yelled, getting the attention of teammates in various stages of packing up their belongings.
“It wasn’t me. I didn’t doing it,” Jusuf Nurkic said immediately. “I not knowing why all looking at me with accusing faces.”
“Nobody was looking at you, Jusuf,” Nikola replied warily. “I was just inviting the perpetrator to give themselves up before I kick their ass. But while we’re on the subject, are you sure you didn’t come up with these yourself?”
Jusuf looked around in surprise as if he couldn’t believe the accusations levied against him. “No way! I betting it was Danilo. Danilo very jealousy of your passings and shootings. He tell me in private that he wishes trade of Jokic.”
“Don’t make stuff up,” retorted Danilo Gallinari. “I love Nikola. We ALL love the guy. All except one of us.”
“I not liking tone,” Jusuf said surlily. “Nikola, please telling Danilo to shut up mouth if he talk with such voice.”
Nikola was perusing the rest of the immature drawings that were taped to his locker. “Why does this one say ‘Jusuf Nurkic should be starter, not Nikola’? That seems awfully specific.”
Standing up angrily and throwing up his hands, Jusuf exclaimed, “Fine! It was me, I admitting it! I print out pictures of Nikola and then writings the mean words!” He raised two middle fingers towards the targeted teammate and stormed out of the locker room.
Nikola looked sadly down at the paper in his hands, then crumpled it up. As he stood in silent contemplation, some teammates walked over and began to help tear off the rest from his locker. Outside the locker room’s walls, they could hear Jusuf screaming in rage.