Beating the Odds
An Unlikely Connection Between Nikola Jokić & Dua Lipa
Birth is a mystery. The luck of the draw. We don’t get to pick our blood relatives or what we’re born into—or even sometimes what connects us.
In 1995, two children should’ve been born less than 300 miles apart. One of those babies was born in Sombor, Serbia—a little boy named Nikola Jokić.
Six months later, a little girl would’ve been born in Kosovo. But Dua Lipa’s family fled to the UK a few years earlier due to political instability in the region. “There was too much conflict,” the “Houdini” singer told The Line of Best Fit in 2016. “My parents wanted to finish their studies so they decided to move to London.”
Jokić grew up in Sombor packed into a two-bedroom apartment with his parents, two older brothers, and grandmother. When the Denver Nuggets center was four years old, NATO troops bombed Serbia for 11 weeks during the Kosovo War in 1999.
“I remember things like sirens, bomb shelters, always turning off the lights,” Jokić shared during a Bleacher Report interview in 2017. “We practically lived in the dark. Even at like 9 a.m., everything was turned off.”
The 78-day air war resulted in Yugoslavia, which included Serbia and Montenegro, accepting a peace plan in June 1999 requiring the withdrawal of all forces from Kosovo. Within days, 600,000 Albanians began returning. Dua and her Albanian family didn’t return to the country until 2006 when her father got a job there.
A few things invite me to consider how the lives of Nikola Jokić and Dua Lipa are intertwined and how they’ve intersected with mine—everything beginning from the idea that I shouldn’t know who they are. None of us should. Every day, people aspire to be athletes and musicians, and only the tiniest fraction of them get to play professionally or become commercially successful. It’s even less likely with where they’re from.
In July 2022, Nikola Jokić’s agent, Misko Raznatovic, referenced these odds in a viral Instagram post. Alongside the photo of a 5-year-old Jokić somehow wearing a Denver Nuggets sweatshirt in Sombor, Raznatovic said the “chances of anyone knowing about the Nuggets in a small Serbian town were next to nothing” and the “chances of that same kid growing up to play basketball and achieve his career high, win two MVP titles and sign a historic agreement with the same club whose sweatshirt he wore at age five, were - zero.”
Jokić and Lipa have defied all odds. Upon the release of Dua Lipa’s latest album Radical Optimism, she sat down for an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. In talking about the role criticism plays in her life, Lipa’s mouth curled into a smile. “Every time someone has doubted me, I’ve proved them wrong,” she declared. “I get a real kick out of proving people wrong.”
In that moment, Lipa’s confidence reminded me of a rapper like the ones she saw in Kosovo growing up, such as 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Method Man, and Redman. Her words almost mirrored Cardi B’s line in “I Like It” when the Bronx rapper said, “I like proving niggas wrong, I do what they say I can’t.” Even Nikola Jokić’s teammate Aaron Gordon recently shared in a postgame press conference, “I love when people count us out.”
Who among us hasn't found pleasure in finding success despite others believing we can’t succeed? Even if our biggest doubter is ourselves. And sometimes there are those of us who are too good, too nice with it, that we have to manufacture narratives so we have something to overcome. I think about Michael Jordan looking down at that iPad in The Last Dance and uttering, “I took that personally.”
Nuggets head coach Michael Malone reportedly made a video montage of sports analysts counting the team out after the Minnesota Timberwolves blew them out in Game 2 of this year’s second-round playoff matchup. Down 0-2 in the series, the Nuggets went on to tie it up, beating the Timberwolves by 27 in Game 3 and securing a strong team win in Game 4. Following that victory, Malone echoed Rudy Tomjanovich’s words: “Never underestimate the heart of a champion.”
And let me add—never underestimate a three-time MVP who overcame 11 weeks of bombing to become an NBA champion. Yes, he was drafted during a Taco Bell commercial. And sure, he doesn’t have the athlete’s body we’ve come to expect in the league. But none of that interfered with Jokić rising above Anthony Edwards in Game 4 and throwing the ball down with all his might. Not even the fact that Jokić only dunked 17 times in the regular season. He took on the closest player we’ve seen to Michael Jordan in quite some time and left him awestruck.
Some might say, Jokić took it personally.
I just turned 30, only a year older than Dua Lipa and Nikola Jokić—and like many of us do during our birthdays, I’ve been wondering about what it means to continue aging, to welcome another year. Especially at a time when so many around us aren’t.
It’s a gift to be here. To keep showing up and striving to be better against all odds.
When Lipa performed “New Rules” at the BRIT Awards in 2018, it wasn’t promised she would become one of pop’s most beloved artists, especially after she gained a reputation for not being able to dance and having no stage presence. “I love her lack of energy, go girl give us nothing,” a viewer commented on the performance video, likely not realizing the comment would go viral and get used in countless memes since then.
Lipa has since found vindication. In her latest interview with The Guardian, she remarked that her “Don’t Start Now” performance at the MTV Europe Music awards in 2019 helped flip the script. “I was always going to work toward being a good performer,” said Lipa. “There was no way I was going to not let that happen, regardless.”
I don’t necessarily fear aging—at least not now—because it has to happen. And I have a choice to either stay put or keep pursuing love. Lipa moved back to London alone at the age of 15 to pursue her music career. Jokić was 16 when he left home to join Mega Leks, the Serbian team he played for when the Nuggets drafted him three years later during that Taco Bell commercial.
I’ve already left home, making a new one in the city love brought me to. And for my birthday, me and the friends I made all packed into a party bus and drove to Taco Bell—and I must tell you I felt lighter having listened to Lipa’s “Illusion” on the way to meet our friends and coming off a Nuggets victory the night before.
I must also tell you I know I’ll feel even lighter if the Nuggets are named defending champs at the end of this playoffs. If I get to see Jokić hoist another trophy over his head like he looked dunking on Anthony Edwards the night after my birthday.
We don’t get to pick what we’re born into or what connects us. But on “End Of An Era,” Lipa sings, “I feel like we’re gonna be together,” and that’s a kind of fate I can get behind. Taking pleasure in defying all odds, finding our beloveds wherever they might be.
Thank you!
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Alex, this was beautiful man. I appreciate the backstory of these people and how they relate to you. I have a deeper respect for the resilience people gave gone through to be great. The odds are baffling. It makes me want to continue believing in your self. If it can happen for them - surely it can happen for me.
This is what I like to call ™️The Red Thread of Fate. Sometimes, before we do something that may be important even if we don’t know it then, we feel that thread tug at something in our chest, sometimes it’s so powerful that that string is pulled taut so as to compel us to do whatever it is we must do. Then sometimes after this happens, we recognize why it had to occur, and we’re like, “I knew there was a reason why I did that.”