In search of the real Nikola Jokić - ESPN

ONE AFTERNOON THIS past summer in Sombor, Serbia, Nikola Jokić sat in an auto body shop and watched his friend Nemanja Pavkov work. They've been buddies forever, but this was the first time Jokić paid attention to how his friend makes a living. Pavkov was in constant motion, going from his phone to his customers in the front of his shop to the back, where he oversaw a paint job for one of Jokić's sulkies, the two-wheeled, chariot-like vehicles that attach to Jokić's horses as they race around his track down the street. It was all Jokić could do to keep up.

«Brother,» Jokić began, a look of concern on his face, «you do this all day?»

«Yes, I do,» Pavkov said. «From 7 to 3, and if there's more work, I will stay.»

«Bro, that's hard,» Jokić said.

Pavkov laughed, and a realization struck: This giant man in front of him, the three-time NBA MVP, has never been anything other than a basketball player.

«Bro, just keep playing basketball,» Pavkov said. «You know what you do there, and now you know what we do here. You don't want to have a regular job.»

There's a good chance you don't know a lot about Nikola Jokić, even though you might know a lot about a basketball player by that name. The 6-foot-11 Denver Nuggets center is a uniquely mysterious superstar, uninterested in the public side of fame, a man living outside our current hyperconnected moment. What you probably do know about him, especially if you are an American sports fan, is confined to what anybody with a television can see on a basketball court. That knowledge can be vast and rewarding. It could be enough.

But there is a place where he is anything but mysterious: Sombor, an unassuming town of 41,000 in northwest Serbia that appears to have been dropped by parachute