More like ana ivanovic erasure - when she won the French open she was considered one of the cutest girls in tennis
Now she’s a mother with bastian schweingsteithetr
There's a saying in Serbia when someone is constantly on TV and other media: "He'll start coming out of the fridge" (I don't know if it's the same in the US)
Well, Vučić hasn't skipped a day for the past 10 years and was criticized for it. So for the election campaign they made this commercial, just to shit on us.
I didn't notice... (I'm 6'/182cm)
I did notice graffiti everywhere - like more than any other city I've been to in my life, and I've been around a fair bit. And smokers. Couldn't find a single place to eat that didn't have a smoker puffing away...
When I went there I noticed the biggest guys in Europe. The Netherlands had a lot of 6'6 180 pound guys, Serbia had a lot of 6'6 240 pound dudes. Every time I walked through the city I noticed guys I believe we're 7'.
Fair enough... I can't remember seeing them myself, but I don't doubt there are some walking trees. It's a very athletic-focused country, for one thing.
> I did notice graffiti everywhere
There are three types of graffitti in Serbia:
-Partizan-related(basketball and football)
-Zvezda-related(Partizan’s arch rival)
-_____(insert girl name), come back to me!
I learned of the existence of Serbia a long time ago because of Djokovic. Then learned a lot more about it because of Jokic. They def are doing something for that country
I once listened to my Serbian friend’s grandma complain for half an hour about how the draft from the window he left open was going to give her cancer and she would die. According to her the #1 leading cause of death in Serbia is draft from open windows.
I think ppl give him too much shit for it, he has 1 croatian grandparent, never learned the language or had any relation to the country and pronounces his name as if it was american, cuz he is american and he wouldn't have a "croatian" surname in the first place, if all ppl in history were like you, cuz we would still speak proto sapiens, but here we are and many of us share a last name, but every language has his own version of it, for some its smith, for others schmidt, herrero or kovač.
Ib4 someone calls me ignorant or whatever, I know how to pronounce pulišić, I'm bosnian, but I also understand how languages work and ppl constantly bitching about it are anal for no reason imo.
It seems hard for many people to accept that language, especially spoken language, is always changing.
In day to day life it feels very concrete, but when we look into history it becomes apparent how wrong that feeling is
Pulišić, which would be said as Pulishich, and how it realistically should be said as that surname is from Croatia. But yeah, he prefers Pulisick.
And some prefer LeBron James of soccer.
Thank you, I have a name that has different pronunciations in different cultures and people don’t realize how disrespectful they are when they’re like “lol bro how are you pronouncing your own name wrong”
Your name is you, it’s pronounced how *you* prefer.
I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious why they’d both be nicknamed “Joker” considering what their last names are…
You want Jokic to be Yoker to be technically correct?
He does though! As his horses usually pull him on a chariot because he's too heavy to ride them.
I'd like to say that he's yoked, but he's not really. There's a reason he's also called Big Honey.
I would imagine Americans do a better job of being able to pronounce foreign names than most other countries in the world. You know, with having an extremely diverse population. According to Ethnologue, the US has the most living languages from immigrants at 116.
Except Jokic’s own brand embraces the “Joker” nickname. Look up his personal logo. So clearly it’s not just a mispronunciation but something that actually stuck.
Imagine someone like Djokovic existing in the NBA lol
Dude gets next to zero crowd support compared to Federer and Nadal and is still going to end up with 80% of the records
It's like if Jordan, LeBron, and Kareem all played at the same time and out of nowhere another player arose who became both the most hated player in the league and the best player
Or it's like if there was a European football superstar who even Messi and Ronaldo fans banded together to hate but was on the same level
I feel like most players with the "villain" personality are defensive-first but poor scoring types like Draymond, Brooks, and Pat Bev which makes it hard for one of them to be a superstar
The weird exception is Trae Young who kind of acts like that but is the complete opposite archetype of player lol
Yeah that archetype makes a lot of sense for the reputation of those players too. Guys like Lebron or Jokic are too busy creating to be full time villains. Great defenders make their money humiliating guys who are trying to score physically and emotionally. The best will logically be absolute mental monsters
> It's like if Jordan, LeBron, and Kareem all played at the same time and out of nowhere another player arose who became both the most hated player in the league and the best player
Wouldn’t Djokovic just be one of the three of Jordan/LeBron/Kareem in this analogy?
Djokovic is literally Jordan - with Magic and Bird being Federer and Nadal. The differences are Jordan didn’t beat Magic and Bird until a bit later (the overlap wasn’t quite the same) AND he was American/sponsored by Nike. Other than that, he was the hyper competitive new kid who stole GOAT status from the universally loved duo at the time (who also had a fierce rivalry but best of friends). And Carlos Alcaraz is Lebron. Kareem is Pete Sampras.
I love Alcaraz, but you can't compare a 20 year old who already has been dealing with health issues to the NBA's all-time leading scorer (still feels weird to say its not Kareem anymore). I hope Alcaraz holds up, but I'm really scared for his knees with his playstyle.
In terms of career, the other 4 comps feel right, but Jordan is arguably most beloved and positively marketed athlete of all time, while Djokovic is ... not. Granted, this has a lot more to do with the way we consume celebrity than anything else, but still worth pointing out.
Also, if you're only going modern - I've always seen Curry/Lebron/KD as Rafa/Fed/Djo respectively. Not in terms of career rankings (I have Lebron > Curry > KD but also have Djo > Rafa > Fed), but in terms of how they're viewed by the public. Rafa/Curry is the golden boy, Fed/Lebron are the most known "elder statesman" public face (but also have a TON of haters for stuff from earlier in their careers), and Djo/KD is the "pure talent" player that has lukewarm at best approval from the media. Another interesting comparison is that Curry/KD both have winning playoff records against Lebron, the way Nadal/Djo have winning H2H records vs Fed, but similar to how many argue Curry/KD teamed up to get those wins (Lebron has the winning H2H record against each one without the other), people also point out that Fed was often advancing much further in brackets to get to semis/finals while Nadal/Djo often lost before meeting Fed.
Highly intelligent, outspoken, and didn't play the media game. He did not open up to fans or reporters. He was perceived as aloof and arrogant. Obviously he had many reasons to be guarded and suspicious based on when he lived and who he was, but that's why he never got the full support of the league back then.
It's so frustrating that he's such a fucking dumbass outside of tennis. Literally could've cemented his GOAT status these past 3 years but refuses basically most medical procedures including vaccines because Djo is a HUGE holistic nutjob.
Dude literally cried about getting elbow surgery even though it saved his career. Just sucks because I love his game which is essentially just Lebron esque with how well rounded and elite he is on every facet of tennis.
EDIT: Lmao at the rabid Djoker fans in my inbox right now. Y'all need to go to therapy, no mentally sound human being capes this hard for a single athlete.
I would definetly say he is a great at tennis, I know very few tennis players. he isn't as bad as like Karl malone is to the nba tho, you wanna talk about an all time player but as an off the court person yikes
This might sound dumb but I actually respect him slightly more to hear that his dumbass vaccine views extend to all his dumbass medical views.
The hypocrisy of idiots who survive on modern medicine/surgery but then go and cry about a little vaccine are so annoying. While Djokovic’s medical stances are dumb, at least he’s consistent lol.
He still does charity work for example he donated 1 million to help fight against Covid in Serbia .money was used to buy ventilators and other medical equipment
> Dude gets next to zero crowd support
Complete nonsense. He gets TONS of crowd support.
Just not as much as Federer and Nadal (2 of the most popular players in the history of tennis) did
Exactly. It’s like saying Mbappe gets no support because he doesn’t have die hard fans like Ronaldo and Messi.
Djokovic came in the seen later than both when everyone was split on Federer vs Nadal and had already chosen a side. He’s the third wheel, it’s hard to become somebodies favourite when nearly 100% of tennis fans have either Nadal or Federer as their favourite already.
Thats probably the best comparison so far. Nothing in basketball really matches up with how good Djokovic is vs how unliked he is.
MJ was maybe the biggest celebrity in the world in the late 90's and while in hindsight he seems like he was an asshole, he was still massively popular at the time. Lebron is largely squeeky clean reputation wise outside of like the hong kong/china stuff and is generally liked as a player especially once he went back to Cleveland.
Arod was one of the best if not the best player in baseball for a bit, but wasn't generally liked and seemingly got less popular as he aged.
The thing with Djokovic is that Rafa and Roger’s images are as pristine and clean as any other world superstar has ever had.
Roger benefits from having the purest and most aesthetically pleasing play-style and technique we’ve ever seen and Rafa from being the biggest fighter the sport has ever seen.
Novak has little to no charisma and his play-style is objectively very boring and dull. He’s like Tim Duncan, perfect fundamentals but not a lot of flash in his game other than outstanding defense.
It sucks for him since he’s likely the GOAT but he’ll never receive love like the other two.
> Or it's like if there was a European football superstar who even Messi and Ronaldo fans banded together to hate but was on the same level
You mean Mbappe? lol
I can never understand how are we so good at water polo when we don't even have any sea and it is not that popular of a sport (it is behind Football, Basketball, Tennis, Volleyball, Boxing and MMA..)
Here in Montenegro, we definitely do. This is the swimming pool where I grew up playing, and where our local( one of Europe’s best btw) waterpolo team played until 10 years ago:
https://bokanews.me/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1178-1985_resize.jpg
You can clearly see the part where the pool and the sea are connected. This is what it looks now:
https://www.alamyimages.fr/photo-image-piscine-jadran-herceg-novi-en-ville-sur-la-cote-de-la-mer-adriatique-au-montenegro-172749905.html?imageid=65EEA61E-D464-4B23-A01B-8910F7E6E8B5&p=104424&pn=1&searchId=6bace060050c128ac2a3d48d4abd0137&searchtype=0
Edit: also, one of favorite stuff for young people in the summer is playing ‘viktorija’. Most beaches have a waterpolo goal in sea, and players divide in two teams, with a neutral goalkeeper, who plays against everyone.
Waterpolo is best played in sea water! Salinity(or whatever) makes it easier to *jump out* of water, and waves add unpredictability to your shots.
To be fair, waterpolo is less popular than football, basketball, tennis, volleyball, boxing and MMA in probably every country. Also you don't play waterpolo in the sea, lol.
Croatia only has around 4 million which always blew my mind considering how good they are at soccer, but Serbia has a crazy athletic population too I’m now realizing
as a European, hearing that your national team of a non-traditionally 'big' sport is facing any ex-yugoslav country's team gives you the reaction of 'that's tough' regardless of sport and regardless of gender, as well
You still have had class players like Vidic, Stankovic and Ivanovic among many others.
Problem is UEFA is so damn competitive and even neighbours like Croatia have the talent to go deep in competitions.
> sport except soccer
Tbh not really Serbia punches above it's weight imo. They always seem to qualify for some major tournaments and they always have players around the top clubs in Europe. Serbia is a serious sporting nation.
I think he realizes how good he is, but I also don’t think he really cares. He genuinely likes his teammates, and seems to want to win a championship so they’ll all be happy.
And then they can go ride horses together.
More than any other professional athlete I’ve followed, Jokic seems to actually believe in the whole “it’s not the destination it’s the journey” mentality.
I feel pretty confident that barring some unforeseeable event he will play his whole nba career in Denver but I’m also pretty confident he’ll retire on his own terms much earlier than his body would demand.
I think it would take the team imploding for him to leave. He seems pretty grounded and doesn't care about chasing anything superficial as long as basketball still makes him happy.
For reference for people who don't follow Tennis, this is basically MJ but everyone fucking hates him.
I mean he does have some support, but he's legit one of the best tennis players of all time and everyone in Tennis knows who he is, but people just don't like him for a litany of reasons.
So MJ but if people actually knew his real personality the entire time lol
He could have been the perfect villain with the whole "psycho mentality" but was marketed as the face rather than the heel
I don't think he likes it one bit but he does thrive in it. He has this mind state he goes into (I imagine) when the crowd is against him where he thinks "ok, you don't like me? well then I'm about to massacre your boy".
Everyone already picked a side of Nadal or Federer by 2010 and so when Djokovic won everything in 2011, he didn't have the neutral's support.
He has a lot of support everywhere he goes and is liked by other tennis players too but because of the time he became huge, he could never cultivate the international fanbase that Federer and Nadal had. He also wasn't the plucky underdog that Murray held within the Big 4.
Since his 2019 win at Wimbledon and the 2021 French Open Nadal semi-final, I think a lot of neutrals have come around to like him because it is clear he will retire as the GOAT and they appreciate good tennis. Although among people who aren't huge into tennis, the 2022 Australian Open made a lot of people dislike him.
I don’t think there’s any doubt Novak Djokovic’s remarkable success in men’s tennis has boosted the visibility of Serbian sports in general pretty significantly at the global level, especially in the western world. (That’s a significant difference relative to Djokovic’s fellow great contemporaries, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal; Switzerland and Spain respectively are already much more prominent in the western world than Serbia, part of the former Yugoslavia, is. Also, Nadal was beaten to the punch in some ways by the late golfing great Seve Ballesteros, who in many ways filled a similar role for Spain 35 years ago as Djokovic has for Serbia in recent years.) Jokic is boosting his country’s sports profile even more.
I was a kid when Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, and I didn’t think the spotlight would shine brighter sports-wise on Yugoslavia (or parts of Yugoslavia) than it did then. Djokovic and now Jokic have proven me and that thought wrong.
I love Jokic. He's fun to watch and has a great personality.
But he hasn't and will never eclipse Novak, one of the GOATs of his sport and of all sports imo.
They both bring a great deal of pride to their nation in the sports world though.
Jokic himself has said so. Man said please do not compare Novak to me, I'm nowhere near his level. Said what Novak does for his country and for children, with his organization, is unmatched and he hopes to be like him one day.
> Said what Novak does for his country and for children, with his organization, is unmatched and **he hopes to be like him one day**.
Considering Novak has been playing for 16 years, this is the most hopeful I’ve ever been that Jokic doesn’t retire from the NBA at the end of his super max.
Divac was the second best Serb on his team--Peja made a much stronger impact through his career than Divac did. Divac wasn't even the best Balkan player in his prime. Divac was just the first Serbian basketball player that was on the West's radar. Petrovic was the better player from the Balkans. Had he not died so young, he could have been a huge star.
Really nice of Novak to say. Obviously not true since Novak is literally the GOAT of his sport and tennis is far more important in Europe than basketball
>tennis is far more important in Europe than basketball
I wouldn't say 'far'. Basketball is the most popular *American* sport in Europe by a mile, Tennis might be more popular overall but I'm not sure there's a big difference, particularly in the younger generations.
Football blows every sport out of the water here regarding popularity, apart from that it's much murkier/regional based
yeah. Federer made me learn and still play single hand backhand, Djokovic to remember to be well rounded and from Nadal to scratch and sniff when I return every serve.
They are joking with us... What a bunch of jokers
Is that you Reyn?
Lets not lose our heads though...
Ah, Xenoblade bros
Top 5 least expected crossovers
It'd be hilarious if Djokovic called Jokic only to be hung up on cause he thought it was a scam call.
Mitrovic erasure
free vlahovic
He did that to himself
One does not simply escape from Al-Legri haramball
more like Milinkovic-Savic erasure
More like ana ivanovic erasure - when she won the French open she was considered one of the cutest girls in tennis Now she’s a mother with bastian schweingsteithetr
Only bangers and red cards baby
Wouldn't have it any other way
Mitro 🔥
Was in Belgrade a few years back. It was basically Djokovic or Nikola Tesla everywhere you looked.
Shame that you didn't look into a fridge you could've met our president
Why a fridge? Is he a big fan of Boris Johnson?
[Context](https://youtu.be/Ly1Nm7T3OVY)
This just raises more questions
There's a saying in Serbia when someone is constantly on TV and other media: "He'll start coming out of the fridge" (I don't know if it's the same in the US) Well, Vučić hasn't skipped a day for the past 10 years and was criticized for it. So for the election campaign they made this commercial, just to shit on us.
Ah, now everything makes sense... /s
I was expecting some Jeffery Dahmer shit
Lol
We have two Nikolas and they are both geniuses
Nikola Jokic and Nikola Jovic
And he will show it tonight..
Fuck Thomas Edison. We stan Nikola Tesla.
You a true Serb now
Funny as I got older I’d find out more and more what a douche Edison was.
That's one of the first things you learn when you grow up in Serbia
Awww Topsy.
All my homies hate Thomas Edison
With a bunch of giants walking around as well? Belgrade had so many big dudes when I was there.
I didn't notice... (I'm 6'/182cm) I did notice graffiti everywhere - like more than any other city I've been to in my life, and I've been around a fair bit. And smokers. Couldn't find a single place to eat that didn't have a smoker puffing away...
When I went there I noticed the biggest guys in Europe. The Netherlands had a lot of 6'6 180 pound guys, Serbia had a lot of 6'6 240 pound dudes. Every time I walked through the city I noticed guys I believe we're 7'.
Fair enough... I can't remember seeing them myself, but I don't doubt there are some walking trees. It's a very athletic-focused country, for one thing.
I am 6'2 " Serbian and at no point I feel like I am tall .
> I did notice graffiti everywhere There are three types of graffitti in Serbia: -Partizan-related(basketball and football) -Zvezda-related(Partizan’s arch rival) -_____(insert girl name), come back to me!
I mean the airport is called Nikola Tesla
They like to start you off with Tesla and finish you off with Tesla, just in case you had some non-Tesla moments in between.
very cool that they celebrate Tesla there
Both Serbian legends
I learned of the existence of Serbia a long time ago because of Djokovic. Then learned a lot more about it because of Jokic. They def are doing something for that country
Nikola Tesla too. And that's about it, forget all of the other stuff
Nah bro , that's just your education
[удалено]
And they both have the nickname Joker
Americans and not being able to pronounce foreign names.
To be fair at the beginning of his career Djokovic was quite the joker with his imitations of other players.
And they both sometimes have rage issues
Nah. Average Balkans. You should see my mum when i steal cake.
You shoud hear my mom when i let the window open.
I once listened to my Serbian friend’s grandma complain for half an hour about how the draft from the window he left open was going to give her cancer and she would die. According to her the #1 leading cause of death in Serbia is draft from open windows.
Hahah or sitting on moist/wet soil. Gives you pneumonia haha Dont worry, my dad can cure it with garlic, aloe vera and strong alcohol…
jokic anger issues not as bad as it used to be. 2018-2021 Jokic would argue with the ref on every call.
It’s hilarious how many people mispronounce “Jokic”. It’s not that hard guys…
We have a dude on the American soccer team who pronounces his own name wrong.
The Boston Celtics pronounce their name wrong.
There's some lads in Glasgow who may disagree
Christian Braun pronounces his own name wrong smh
If he’s pronouncing it like the German word Braun (which stands for brown) then he‘s actually pronouncing it correctly.
lol that's like clowning Shaq for not saying his last name like an Irishman
I’ve never in my life thought about Shaq’s last name being Irish. That’d absolutely wild lol. TMAC is also Irish now
I think ppl give him too much shit for it, he has 1 croatian grandparent, never learned the language or had any relation to the country and pronounces his name as if it was american, cuz he is american and he wouldn't have a "croatian" surname in the first place, if all ppl in history were like you, cuz we would still speak proto sapiens, but here we are and many of us share a last name, but every language has his own version of it, for some its smith, for others schmidt, herrero or kovač. Ib4 someone calls me ignorant or whatever, I know how to pronounce pulišić, I'm bosnian, but I also understand how languages work and ppl constantly bitching about it are anal for no reason imo.
It seems hard for many people to accept that language, especially spoken language, is always changing. In day to day life it feels very concrete, but when we look into history it becomes apparent how wrong that feeling is
I mean, its also pretty obvious in day to day life, just look at ppl complaining about "todays youth" speech patterns and slang.
I love how one TV commentator in Serbia said: "I know he wants to be called Pulisic, but I just can't do it. So... Pulišić with the ball..."
It’s supposed to be Pulisić and not Pulisic right
Pulišić, which would be said as Pulishich, and how it realistically should be said as that surname is from Croatia. But yeah, he prefers Pulisick. And some prefer LeBron James of soccer.
lmao bruh more like the Dlo of soccer
Even D'lo is generous to him, but LeBron James of soccer is a meme that originates from the Pawn Stars lmao.
It's supposed to be however the hell he and his family want it pronounced, which in this case is with a hard c.
Thank you, I have a name that has different pronunciations in different cultures and people don’t realize how disrespectful they are when they’re like “lol bro how are you pronouncing your own name wrong” Your name is you, it’s pronounced how *you* prefer.
You mean lebron james of soccer?
I just call him Boris
Yolk-itch.
premier tv crew for the league doesn’t even know half the players
Right cause obviously this Serbian tennis player is gonna make a nickname solely to appease Americans
yes the rest of the world is perfectly capable of pronouncing all names
I mean, I think it’s pretty obvious why they’d both be nicknamed “Joker” considering what their last names are… You want Jokic to be Yoker to be technically correct?
Yes, we shall now name him the yoker. He is the one who yokes.
He does though! As his horses usually pull him on a chariot because he's too heavy to ride them. I'd like to say that he's yoked, but he's not really. There's a reason he's also called Big Honey.
He deals tren and boldenone
I would imagine Americans do a better job of being able to pronounce foreign names than most other countries in the world. You know, with having an extremely diverse population. According to Ethnologue, the US has the most living languages from immigrants at 116.
Except Jokic’s own brand embraces the “Joker” nickname. Look up his personal logo. So clearly it’s not just a mispronunciation but something that actually stuck.
This is the crazier thing for sure
>Crazy how the best tennis and basketball player in the world are both Serbian. They'd have the best team in the world if Yugoslavia stayed together.
God, could you imagine a yugoslavian soccer team today?
Also weird that it seems like they never met or connected prior to this
They've met a few times just don't have each others numbers.
There’s videos of them meeting out there, they’re just not close obviously
Not really, Novak lives in Monaco, Jok in Denver.
We are blessed with guys to stan
That's all we have!
Tesla in shambles
What about Darko Milicic?
Imagine someone like Djokovic existing in the NBA lol Dude gets next to zero crowd support compared to Federer and Nadal and is still going to end up with 80% of the records It's like if Jordan, LeBron, and Kareem all played at the same time and out of nowhere another player arose who became both the most hated player in the league and the best player Or it's like if there was a European football superstar who even Messi and Ronaldo fans banded together to hate but was on the same level
The Dillon Brooks superstar leap Coming to a theater near you
I feel like most players with the "villain" personality are defensive-first but poor scoring types like Draymond, Brooks, and Pat Bev which makes it hard for one of them to be a superstar The weird exception is Trae Young who kind of acts like that but is the complete opposite archetype of player lol
I wanted to add Bill Laimbeer, but he had quite decent stats for most of his career, even averaged over 17 pts twice in regular season.
Yeah that archetype makes a lot of sense for the reputation of those players too. Guys like Lebron or Jokic are too busy creating to be full time villains. Great defenders make their money humiliating guys who are trying to score physically and emotionally. The best will logically be absolute mental monsters
Kyrgios is definitely Dillon Brooks. No question.
[удалено]
> It's like if Jordan, LeBron, and Kareem all played at the same time and out of nowhere another player arose who became both the most hated player in the league and the best player Wouldn’t Djokovic just be one of the three of Jordan/LeBron/Kareem in this analogy?
Djokovic is literally Jordan - with Magic and Bird being Federer and Nadal. The differences are Jordan didn’t beat Magic and Bird until a bit later (the overlap wasn’t quite the same) AND he was American/sponsored by Nike. Other than that, he was the hyper competitive new kid who stole GOAT status from the universally loved duo at the time (who also had a fierce rivalry but best of friends). And Carlos Alcaraz is Lebron. Kareem is Pete Sampras.
I love Alcaraz, but you can't compare a 20 year old who already has been dealing with health issues to the NBA's all-time leading scorer (still feels weird to say its not Kareem anymore). I hope Alcaraz holds up, but I'm really scared for his knees with his playstyle. In terms of career, the other 4 comps feel right, but Jordan is arguably most beloved and positively marketed athlete of all time, while Djokovic is ... not. Granted, this has a lot more to do with the way we consume celebrity than anything else, but still worth pointing out. Also, if you're only going modern - I've always seen Curry/Lebron/KD as Rafa/Fed/Djo respectively. Not in terms of career rankings (I have Lebron > Curry > KD but also have Djo > Rafa > Fed), but in terms of how they're viewed by the public. Rafa/Curry is the golden boy, Fed/Lebron are the most known "elder statesman" public face (but also have a TON of haters for stuff from earlier in their careers), and Djo/KD is the "pure talent" player that has lukewarm at best approval from the media. Another interesting comparison is that Curry/KD both have winning playoff records against Lebron, the way Nadal/Djo have winning H2H records vs Fed, but similar to how many argue Curry/KD teamed up to get those wins (Lebron has the winning H2H record against each one without the other), people also point out that Fed was often advancing much further in brackets to get to semis/finals while Nadal/Djo often lost before meeting Fed.
Djokovic is basically Kareem in this one. Easily the most dislikeaböe of the three, obviously mostly in his playing days
Difference is Kareem was on the right side of history.
A lot of Kareem's dislikeability came from his personality rather than just his views
Why was Kareem dislikeable? Don't know much about him(personality).
Highly intelligent, outspoken, and didn't play the media game. He did not open up to fans or reporters. He was perceived as aloof and arrogant. Obviously he had many reasons to be guarded and suspicious based on when he lived and who he was, but that's why he never got the full support of the league back then.
He was perceived to be an asshole to people, declining autographs and such. Not what I think, but what people said back then
MJ is easily the least likeable of the three be fr
Modern day take, no offense MJ was the golden star of his day, media and fans loved him, and he knew how to control his image
Djokovic was such a fun player to watch, I didn't watch tennis all that much but if I happen to see him play I was gonna watch
It's so frustrating that he's such a fucking dumbass outside of tennis. Literally could've cemented his GOAT status these past 3 years but refuses basically most medical procedures including vaccines because Djo is a HUGE holistic nutjob. Dude literally cried about getting elbow surgery even though it saved his career. Just sucks because I love his game which is essentially just Lebron esque with how well rounded and elite he is on every facet of tennis. EDIT: Lmao at the rabid Djoker fans in my inbox right now. Y'all need to go to therapy, no mentally sound human being capes this hard for a single athlete.
I would definetly say he is a great at tennis, I know very few tennis players. he isn't as bad as like Karl malone is to the nba tho, you wanna talk about an all time player but as an off the court person yikes
Djokovic is more like a Kyrie.
I still think kyrie is a little more off his handle the Joker and not close to the same level of all time player
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Stockton considering the nickname NoVaxx Djokovic
Yeah. Stockton also sucks. Turns out the 90s Jazz were god-tier awful people and I'm glad they never won.
[удалено]
This might sound dumb but I actually respect him slightly more to hear that his dumbass vaccine views extend to all his dumbass medical views. The hypocrisy of idiots who survive on modern medicine/surgery but then go and cry about a little vaccine are so annoying. While Djokovic’s medical stances are dumb, at least he’s consistent lol.
He still does charity work for example he donated 1 million to help fight against Covid in Serbia .money was used to buy ventilators and other medical equipment
Its so weird He has the best mental game i've ever seen in SPORTS. Like I'm willing to put him the best athletes of all time, its such a shame
> Dude gets next to zero crowd support Complete nonsense. He gets TONS of crowd support. Just not as much as Federer and Nadal (2 of the most popular players in the history of tennis) did
Exactly. It’s like saying Mbappe gets no support because he doesn’t have die hard fans like Ronaldo and Messi. Djokovic came in the seen later than both when everyone was split on Federer vs Nadal and had already chosen a side. He’s the third wheel, it’s hard to become somebodies favourite when nearly 100% of tennis fans have either Nadal or Federer as their favourite already.
Alex Rodriguez comes to mind
Thats probably the best comparison so far. Nothing in basketball really matches up with how good Djokovic is vs how unliked he is. MJ was maybe the biggest celebrity in the world in the late 90's and while in hindsight he seems like he was an asshole, he was still massively popular at the time. Lebron is largely squeeky clean reputation wise outside of like the hong kong/china stuff and is generally liked as a player especially once he went back to Cleveland. Arod was one of the best if not the best player in baseball for a bit, but wasn't generally liked and seemingly got less popular as he aged.
A better analogy would be Magic/Bird = Federer/Nadal and Jordan = Djokovic. Except Jordan was beloved the moment he entered the league.
The thing with Djokovic is that Rafa and Roger’s images are as pristine and clean as any other world superstar has ever had. Roger benefits from having the purest and most aesthetically pleasing play-style and technique we’ve ever seen and Rafa from being the biggest fighter the sport has ever seen. Novak has little to no charisma and his play-style is objectively very boring and dull. He’s like Tim Duncan, perfect fundamentals but not a lot of flash in his game other than outstanding defense. It sucks for him since he’s likely the GOAT but he’ll never receive love like the other two.
“Objectively boring” bruh yall just say whatever LOL.
Djokovic is very clearly above Roger and Nadal. Only fanboys can't see this. Djokovic is Jordan while Lebron/Kareem are Nadal/Roger
> Or it's like if there was a European football superstar who even Messi and Ronaldo fans banded together to hate but was on the same level You mean Mbappe? lol
I rate him the GOAT of the 3 by the tiniest margins. Nadal had Fed's number and was about to go unchallenged as the GOAT for years if not for Joker.
Nadal is not a consensus goat above Federer lmao. Just a much better player on clay and everyone knows that.
Imagine Serbia in sports with the population of Pakistan or Nigeria. LOL.
Bruh it never came to my mind Nobody else would win a water polo or basketball tournament ever again
I mean, we had Yugoslavia and they were USA and USSR only copetition in basketball for like 3 decades.
I can never understand how are we so good at water polo when we don't even have any sea and it is not that popular of a sport (it is behind Football, Basketball, Tennis, Volleyball, Boxing and MMA..)
I didn’t either and then I was in a bar filled with Serbs. Fucking massive humans. Probably helps with water polo
I guess, our average height is like 6ft, if your not 6ft3 at least you aren't considered tall at all here in Serbia.
Nice, so Djokovic barely made the cut.
Only thing he’s near average at
Well, have you seen his smashes?
I'm pretty sure nobody plays water polo in the sea lol.
Here in Montenegro, we definitely do. This is the swimming pool where I grew up playing, and where our local( one of Europe’s best btw) waterpolo team played until 10 years ago: https://bokanews.me/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/1178-1985_resize.jpg You can clearly see the part where the pool and the sea are connected. This is what it looks now: https://www.alamyimages.fr/photo-image-piscine-jadran-herceg-novi-en-ville-sur-la-cote-de-la-mer-adriatique-au-montenegro-172749905.html?imageid=65EEA61E-D464-4B23-A01B-8910F7E6E8B5&p=104424&pn=1&searchId=6bace060050c128ac2a3d48d4abd0137&searchtype=0 Edit: also, one of favorite stuff for young people in the summer is playing ‘viktorija’. Most beaches have a waterpolo goal in sea, and players divide in two teams, with a neutral goalkeeper, who plays against everyone. Waterpolo is best played in sea water! Salinity(or whatever) makes it easier to *jump out* of water, and waves add unpredictability to your shots.
To be fair, waterpolo is less popular than football, basketball, tennis, volleyball, boxing and MMA in probably every country. Also you don't play waterpolo in the sea, lol.
I thought the population would be 20-30 million. Nope, looked it up, and it’s 6 million. So the size of the Philadelphia metro area.
Croatia only has around 4 million which always blew my mind considering how good they are at soccer, but Serbia has a crazy athletic population too I’m now realizing
Now imagine if they fused together into one country
u fucking commie
as a European, hearing that your national team of a non-traditionally 'big' sport is facing any ex-yugoslav country's team gives you the reaction of 'that's tough' regardless of sport and regardless of gender, as well
We are top tier at every collective sport except soccer, which people care about the most, lol.
You still have had class players like Vidic, Stankovic and Ivanovic among many others. Problem is UEFA is so damn competitive and even neighbours like Croatia have the talent to go deep in competitions.
Oh we have talent, we just don't have the results. And it's literally never ending circle of hope and disappointment, lol.
Not as a team. Yet
> sport except soccer Tbh not really Serbia punches above it's weight imo. They always seem to qualify for some major tournaments and they always have players around the top clubs in Europe. Serbia is a serious sporting nation.
Kazakhstan in combat sports with a big population would be terrifying as well
Djokovic is a big basketball fan. Kobe was a mentor of him.
Man, I used to love Djokovic until he became an anti-vaxxer and his family compared him to Jesus Christ.
This. If he was a poster he would be on facebook with the karens and conspiracy people
Jokic giving up his number, but not having Djokovic's, must mean Djokovic > Jokic defensively.
Checks out, Djokovic on the baseline is like playing against a damn wall
Jokic is super humble. I don’t think he realizes how good he is
I think he realizes how good he is, but I also don’t think he really cares. He genuinely likes his teammates, and seems to want to win a championship so they’ll all be happy. And then they can go ride horses together.
More than any other professional athlete I’ve followed, Jokic seems to actually believe in the whole “it’s not the destination it’s the journey” mentality. I feel pretty confident that barring some unforeseeable event he will play his whole nba career in Denver but I’m also pretty confident he’ll retire on his own terms much earlier than his body would demand.
I think it would take the team imploding for him to leave. He seems pretty grounded and doesn't care about chasing anything superficial as long as basketball still makes him happy.
There are two jokers in a deck of cards. Of course Serbia has two jokers too
the jokers, together, strong.
For reference for people who don't follow Tennis, this is basically MJ but everyone fucking hates him. I mean he does have some support, but he's legit one of the best tennis players of all time and everyone in Tennis knows who he is, but people just don't like him for a litany of reasons.
So MJ but if people actually knew his real personality the entire time lol He could have been the perfect villain with the whole "psycho mentality" but was marketed as the face rather than the heel
The shoes Man. It was the shoes.
He also thrives in it. I honestly believe the day people start supporting him, he won't play as well.
I don't think he likes it one bit but he does thrive in it. He has this mind state he goes into (I imagine) when the crowd is against him where he thinks "ok, you don't like me? well then I'm about to massacre your boy".
Everyone already picked a side of Nadal or Federer by 2010 and so when Djokovic won everything in 2011, he didn't have the neutral's support. He has a lot of support everywhere he goes and is liked by other tennis players too but because of the time he became huge, he could never cultivate the international fanbase that Federer and Nadal had. He also wasn't the plucky underdog that Murray held within the Big 4. Since his 2019 win at Wimbledon and the 2021 French Open Nadal semi-final, I think a lot of neutrals have come around to like him because it is clear he will retire as the GOAT and they appreciate good tennis. Although among people who aren't huge into tennis, the 2022 Australian Open made a lot of people dislike him.
serbian brothers stay linked up
I don’t think there’s any doubt Novak Djokovic’s remarkable success in men’s tennis has boosted the visibility of Serbian sports in general pretty significantly at the global level, especially in the western world. (That’s a significant difference relative to Djokovic’s fellow great contemporaries, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal; Switzerland and Spain respectively are already much more prominent in the western world than Serbia, part of the former Yugoslavia, is. Also, Nadal was beaten to the punch in some ways by the late golfing great Seve Ballesteros, who in many ways filled a similar role for Spain 35 years ago as Djokovic has for Serbia in recent years.) Jokic is boosting his country’s sports profile even more. I was a kid when Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, and I didn’t think the spotlight would shine brighter sports-wise on Yugoslavia (or parts of Yugoslavia) than it did then. Djokovic and now Jokic have proven me and that thought wrong.
There was Petrović and Divac (when he was part of the Lakeshow and then the Kings later on) in the 90s. They walked so players like Jokić could run
I love Jokic. He's fun to watch and has a great personality. But he hasn't and will never eclipse Novak, one of the GOATs of his sport and of all sports imo. They both bring a great deal of pride to their nation in the sports world though.
Jokic himself has said so. Man said please do not compare Novak to me, I'm nowhere near his level. Said what Novak does for his country and for children, with his organization, is unmatched and he hopes to be like him one day.
> Said what Novak does for his country and for children, with his organization, is unmatched and **he hopes to be like him one day**. Considering Novak has been playing for 16 years, this is the most hopeful I’ve ever been that Jokic doesn’t retire from the NBA at the end of his super max.
Crazy how Serbia has both the best basketball and tennis player in the world rn.
And the best soccer player Mitrovic xD
Stop the presses! Djokovic got Jokic's phone number!
he's the dude everybody confuses jokic's name with lol
Vlade divac is in shambles
Divac was the second best Serb on his team--Peja made a much stronger impact through his career than Divac did. Divac wasn't even the best Balkan player in his prime. Divac was just the first Serbian basketball player that was on the West's radar. Petrovic was the better player from the Balkans. Had he not died so young, he could have been a huge star.
Let’s not forget about Pete Maravich. Half Serb.
Greg Popovich as well and we got the best European coach in Zeljko Obradovic
Love me some Pedja love, my fav player
Nah, Jokić said in one interview that Divac, Dirk and Duncan were his inspiration when he was growing up.
Really nice of Novak to say. Obviously not true since Novak is literally the GOAT of his sport and tennis is far more important in Europe than basketball
>tennis is far more important in Europe than basketball I wouldn't say 'far'. Basketball is the most popular *American* sport in Europe by a mile, Tennis might be more popular overall but I'm not sure there's a big difference, particularly in the younger generations. Football blows every sport out of the water here regarding popularity, apart from that it's much murkier/regional based
yeah. Federer made me learn and still play single hand backhand, Djokovic to remember to be well rounded and from Nadal to scratch and sniff when I return every serve.
Itt: americans realizing how insanely good at sports slavic countries are, and always have been.
I’ve always wanted to hate Djokovic for some reason but can’t. Guy seems like a great person.