Nikola Jokic, supposedly, has older brothers that used to torment him all the time when they were kids. And I thank them for doing that, because their brotherly bullying has made Jokic the tough dude he is today. But I was thinking: has anyone tried to turn them into basketball players?
It doesn’t matter how tall or not tall or how skilled or not skilled they are, or even if they’ve ever touched a basketball before. Just look at all the brothers Giannis has. People desire them solely because of the name “Antetokounmpo”. If people were smart, they’d take any living, breathing male with the surname “Jokic”, bring him overseas, and stick him in the G-League to see if he could become good. If not, that’s fine, not much wasted, and the potential to strike gold is super high.
But people aren’t smart. The NBA loves to talk about how they’re mining Europe and other exotic locales for talent, how they’re finding players they never would’ve before, but there’s a whole chunk of easy-to-spot potential talent that they’re blind to.