THE CROWD ROARED as confetti fluttered down from the rafters and Denver Nuggets players, coaches and staff bear-hugged each other on the court, tears dripping down sweaty cheeks. Above them, videoboards at Ball Arena in Denver blinked “2023 NBA Champions.”
Amid the joy, Nuggets star Nikola Jokic surveyed the scene, still in his jersey, awaiting the usual postgame interview. It was June 12, 2023, and Jokic had just posted 28 points and 16 rebounds in an NBA Finals-clinching Game 5 win over the Miami Heat. Moments after the buzzer kicked off a citywide celebration, Jokic was asked how it felt to finally be an NBA champion.
“It’s good, it’s good,” he said. “The job is done. We can go home now.”
He smiled wryly and let out a half-hearted laugh. Kidding or not, returning to Sombor, Serbia, was indeed at the top of his mind. It was there where Jokic could race horses, hike in the mountains and unwind with his family, and he could do so in a country where basketball has become a celebrated national pastime — even if it wasn’t always.
Indeed, well over a half-century before Jokic raised the Larry O’Brien Trophy, the sport barely registered across the region, until one player helped ignite a revolution that reshaped its future and set the foundation for countless players to follow. That includes Jokic, whose Nuggets face the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday in Game 3 of their second-round series down 2-0.
That player was named Radivoj Korać, and just like Jokic, he called the town of Sombor home.
DURING WARMUPS, the 18-year-old Italian center tried to focus on his routine, but his gaze kept drifting toward the other end of the court. There, he stared in awe at a player he had only heard about and read about in newspapers. “Everybody was scared to guard him,” says Dino Meneghin, who was then with the Italian club team Pallacanestro Varese. It was 1968, and this was his first matchup with Korać, then with Petrarca Padova, an Italian club team.
The game was played in Meneghin’s hometown of Varese, in northern Italy, and Meneghin was given the…
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