Jokic: “National team is something sacred. OQT? Too far from now”

Nikola Jokic talked to Glas Amerike about the NT, the past World Cup and the future with Kokoskov.

– On Kokoskov and OQT

“I’m happy because of Igor, he is someone that can bring something new to the national team. We will see. I never say to early if I’ll play or not, so I’m not going to do it now. I’m focused on a season, on my games. OQT’s and Olympic Games are too far from now.”

– Kokoskov said that most of the countries would celebrate fifth place at the World Cup but for Serbia it was a failure.

“I like to say that Serbia is not a country that love basketball as much as we like to win, and that’s are biggest mistake. At the same time that is good because we always want to win. Fifth place was our maximum if we see what we have shown there. We supposed to beat Argentina? Those people came to the finals, played phenomenal, and they didn’t surprise just us, but some bigger teams as well. Look just the rosters that were there. An NBA MVP was there, Giannis, and they had trouble in a group phase.

World Cup is a different system. One game decides who will advance. We know that first game of a tournament and quarterfinal are two most important games, but we lost our against Argentina. We did lose against Spain first, maybe that was a key point. Spain surprised us with a defense, where Bogdan was kind of stopped. Actually, they didn’t let us play the way we can.”

– And you were ejected…

“…And I ejected myself. That’s why I say that basketball is a life thing, you never know what will happen.

What I always say about Denver, now I will say about national team. You are what you show, and that’s it. We could’ve been better? Well, why we didn’t work better then? I don’t know if we have something to prove, but I know that the national team is for all of us, for our nation, something sacred. All those people that are watching us wishes that we are all winners, that Serbia is on a top. Now it is too early to speak about it, really.”