Nikola Jokic and Team Serbia won bronze at Paris Olympics, then the shirts came off: “We are going to get historically drunk”

PARIS — After a day that will live in infamy to the people of Serbia, a handful of old friends talked deep into the night. It was Aug. 8, and then it was Aug. 9, and they couldn’t sleep. So in the treatment room of their team hotel, a few Serbian basketball players ordered a drink and decompressed.

They relived moments from their game that day — a heartbreaking 95-91 loss to Team USA in the semifinals of the Paris Olympics. They pondered how they would bounce back in the upcoming bronze medal game against Germany. Eventually, the conversation drifted away from basketball, and then returned to it, and then strayed again. Nikola Jokic was among the players who stayed up the latest, according to team captain Bogdan Bogdanovic.

“We have so many losses in life, so many wins, that I think we as the players learned that there’s no room for crying a lot,” Bogdanovic told The Denver Post. “There’s another opportunity tomorrow, and you’d better get ready. Because nobody will get you ready if you don’t get yourself ready. I think we had that mindset. And we were up late. We were up to, like, 6 or 7 a.m., talking.

“With friends, and being there with friends, it helps you go through these moments. That’s what we believe.”

At risk of missing the medal podium altogether, Serbia tipped off again 28 hours later against Germany. What happened next for the close-knit national team was a blur of legendary proportions — 10 hours to kill between redemption and coronation, thanks to the awkward morning start time and the interval between Serbia’s game and the gold medal showdown. Ten hours to celebrate.

Jokic’s summer with the national team ended in glory, even after Team USA’s 17-point comeback that he described as the “hardest defeat” of his career. After medaling, the Nuggets center and his countrymen were turned loose in Paris until it was time to return to Accor Arena that night looking noticeably tipsy at the medal ceremony. Jokic will reunite with one of those friends, Bogdanovic, when the Nuggets take on the Hawks this Sunday in Atlanta.

The following is an oral history of Aug. 10, the day Jokic and Serbia won bronze and enjoyed a party for the ages:

Bogdanovic: “Before the game against Germany, it was like, ‘Yo, let’s win this game, and we have the rest of the day free.’ It’s early, but let’s wake up, let’s get this game, and then we have the rest of the day to spend with our family. We don’t know what we’re going to do. And everything after that happened spontaneously.”

Ognjen “Ogi” Stojakovic, Nuggets and Team Serbia assistant coach: “If we win that game, we are going to celebrate. Personally, I didn’t care how we were going to celebrate.”

Jokic finished the tournament with a triple-double: 19 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists. Bogdanovic scored 16 points, shooting 3 for 4 from the perimeter. Serbia won, 93-83. The bus ride back to the hotel was joyous. The players chanted a song for 74-year-old head coach Svetislav “Kari” Pesic.

Stojakovic: “Players came up with that song last year when we were at the (FIBA) World Cup. They came up with that. They twisted the song … ‘Kari’s on fire, la la la la la.’”

Nikola Jovic, Miami Heat and Team Serbia forward: “There’s a soccer player, (Aleksandar) Mitrovic, who plays for the national team. And there’s a song that goes, ‘Mitro’s on fire!’ That’s what we used to do back home. But when we won against Canada in the semifinal last year in the World Cup, I think it was Bogi’s idea to do that. And we just rolled with it.”

Bogdanovic: “It was a very tough game. When you win at the end, it’s an unbelievable feeling. And it was, I don’t know, 1 p.m., 2 p.m. We are taking our time celebrating, all that. But we are slowly heading to the hotel, so we are like, ‘What do we do?’ … I think the Olympic organization told us we need to come back to the podium around 11 p.m., and our bus was going to be 10 p.m. at the hotel. So we only had one obligation, which was 9:30 to be back in the hotel.”

Stojakovic: “The biggest problem was actually that we didn’t have any kind of alcohol in the arena after the game. Because it’s the Olympic Games, they didn’t allow it. My mom was like, ‘Why didn’t we think about that? Why didn’t we bring any rakija or beer or something to sneak inside?’”

There was beer at the hotel, where everyone convened for a quick team lunch. Then they went their separate ways, for a short time. The coaching staff had to attend an event at the Serbian House, the national Olympic committee’s hospitality club in the city, while the players walked five minutes to the Roberta Restaurant, which had been informed that the team would gather there, win or lose.

Alvaro Magalhaes, Roberta employee: “They called us about two days before, and we just closed the restaurant. We don’t care about medals. We care about people who want to enjoy our service.”

Jovic: “It started off slow. I mean, it had to start off slow. Everybody’s waiting for food and everything. But after about an hour, everybody was already, like, half-drunk. Players were calling their whole families. There was family there. Brothers, sisters, parents. So like, 3 or 4 p.m., we were already basically gone.”

Bogdanovic: “At that place, we said, ‘We are going to get historically drunk.’ We were joking. ‘Historically drunk, because we make history.’”

Jokic: “That was the plan. I don’t know if we made it, but that was the plan.”

Stojakovic: “When we came, players were already partying, so we tried to play catch-up. … As a staff, we were like, ‘Why did we go to the Serbian house? Why didn’t we go directly to the party?’”

Magalhaes: “We had some music from Serbia, too. There was a nice man singing around. … I didn’t know what they were singing, but it was good. Everybody was happy. Everybody was dancing. They ate very well in here, at the Roberta Restaurant.”

Bogdanovic: “We found a Serbian singer there, in Paris. I don’t know how we found him. He came and performed live.”

Jovic: “I thought it was Bogi’s sister, who found the band.”

Stojakovic: “I’m not sure who organized it. I heard that (it was) one of the players.”

Magalhaes: “Everybody was gathered on the terrace. It’s a beautiful terrace. Plenty of tables. We just served them from our completely open kitchen, here at the Roberta.”

Jason Miller, Nuggets associate head athletic trainer (who accompanied Serbian Olympic team): “Serbians party hearty and hard. I wouldn’t say I hadn’t seen it before, because I’d been over there since June, and there had been two or three episodes that were the same way.”

Jovic: “I was so tired I had to leave at, like, 6. So I left at 6, went to the hotel, slept for an hour, showered and came back at about 7 or 7:30. By the time I came back, now everybody’s shirtless. It’s just a crazy scenario. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

Stojakovic: “I was drinking beer, but people were drinking everything. Everything.”

Jovic: “I think everybody started out with beer, and then I don’t know. I had a few bottles in my arms. They just passed out bottles. Whatever you wanted to drink. You just had to drink. I guess that was the rule.”

The timeline is blurry, but the team occupied the small restaurant for about five to six hours. At one point, a police officer passing by the terrace asked for the volume of the music to be turned down. Tapas were served. “Everybody was very polite,” Magalhaes said. “They really enjoyed our service, our food and everything at the Roberta.” Then it was time to make the short walk back to the hotel, where players showered and changed into their official medal ceremony attire. They were running behind.

Bogdanovic: “We made it, like, right when the (gold medal) game was over. We almost got there late because we needed more time to get ready. And then at the ceremony, they didn’t trust us. We probably looked a little bit unorganized.”

Steph Curry, Team USA guard: “You knew it right away when you came through. They had a holding area in the back, and it was weird because they added three sections with pull-out chairs. We were in the middle. Serbia was on our left, and France was on our right. Obviously, France was sick about the game, so they were kind of down. We were pretty hype. But they were different. Serbia was a different type of energy.”

Jokic: “We felt that we were on the top of the world.”

Jovic: “We were interacting with the guys from USA because they were the closest ones to us. The guys playing for the USA were a great group of dudes. So they’re just joking with us and everything. … You just look at us, (and) we look funny as hell. We go out. We go on a stage. We feel like we were first, basically. We felt like we won gold.”

Miller: “I love that their philosophy was, with team sports in the Olympics, two medals are earned: gold and the bronze. The silver’s just handed to you for losing.”

Bogdanovic: “I remember that there was one famous actor, Omar Sy, who is from France. He acted in ‘The Untouchables,’ one of my favorite movies. And we saw him in the first row, and then another guy, Thierry Henry. One of the greatest soccer players ever, and one of my favorite players ever, too. So when we saw them, and we were on the podium and a little bit drunk. Me and my friend, we were like, ‘Man, look at these legends over there. They are legends.’”

The coaching staff watched from the baseline as players received their medals, many of them struggling to keep balance. Jokic in particular. It was the second Olympic medal of his career. He helped Serbia win silver in 2016, but that was before his MVP trophies, before his international fame. Now, he was the face of the team, with all the accompanying pressure. After leading the Olympics in points, rebounds, assists and steals, it was his turn to lean on somebody else, nearly stumbling off the podium. 

Jovic: “The greatest player ever, probably, coming from Europe. Not even from our country. The way he was celebrating, you could see that he was really emotional about it. He put everything into it. So he was like, ‘I’m gonna celebrate everything I did this year.’ He was all over the place. He was jumping up and down on the table (at the restaurant).”

Jokic: “I tricked them. To let them know. I tried to trick them to think I’m drunk. I was not really that drunk.”

Bogdanovic: “I don’t know (who was drunkest). For sure, Nikola, or the big guys. Our centers, they can drink a lot. Historically. Our bigs can drink historically.”

Magalhaes: “They were very tall.”

Bogdanovic: “At least we didn’t (screw) anything up. We showed up maybe five minutes late, but we were there. We did the whole ceremony. We respected everyone. Took selfies and all that.”

Jovic: “People from the Olympics, they were like, ‘You’ve gotta hand us the phones.’ For some reason, we were not supposed to have our phones while the medal ceremony was happening.”

Curry: “You could tell they were happy they were getting a medal. You could tell they also didn’t really want to be there because they had already had their fun, if that makes sense. And it took forever. So they were trying to hurry it up so they could probably get back to the party.”

That might’ve been the case if there hadn’t been a flight to catch the next morning. But it was almost time to go home. After a day of exultation, Serbia’s players and coaches mostly just wanted sleep. The gold medal game between Team USA and France had started at 9:30 p.m. local time. It was past midnight now. Everyone got back on the bus and waited to leave the arena. And waited. And waited.

Miller: “The traffic in Paris sucked anyway. And then we sat on the bus for like 20 minutes in the loading dock area and hadn’t moved one inch.”

Jovic: “Because the president of France was in the arena, we basically weren’t able to leave before him. So we’re in the bus. They’re saying, ‘You can’t leave. You can’t leave.’ We’re just trying to get back to the hotel. So I remember, everybody was like, ‘(Screw) this, we’re gonna walk.’ So we walked with the medals, without any security or anything. We just walked for, like, 25 minutes through Paris to get to the hotel after the ceremony. The whole team. We have medals around us. I have the flag with me.”

Miller: “Across the parking lots, across the park, and the party at the restaurant was still going with a few people, so a few stopped there. There were a few people still there, that didn’t go to the medal ceremony. … It was one big group and one last time together to kind of walk back with everybody.”

Jokic: “We’re with a group of guys that probably are gonna remember this our whole life. We’re all kind of a similar age. It was a great memory.”

Stojakovic: “All the pressure that we felt here in the Olympics, it’s done. We did our job. So it’s time for us to have some fun. It’s something they put so much effort into, and all that emotion just went out at the moment when they were celebrating. It’s euphoric, of course. Excitement. Pride. All the emotions in one.”

Jovic: “It’s a different kind of feeling when you bring joy to your whole country. It’s really a different kind of joy.”

The team flew commercial to get back to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. Other travelers passed items to the players for them to autograph. They were seated in the middle of the plane, even Jokic. “We’re all like one,” Jovic said. “If one guy is not in the business class, nobody’s gonna be in the business class.” A couple of days after their return, they celebrated on the balcony of City Hall in front of a massive crowd. And back in Paris?

Magalhaes: “We enjoyed it the same as the players. I follow most of the teams, especially the Americans, the NBA. … I keep recommending to people who walk past on the street, I say, ‘Hey, Serbian team ate here.’ We call that marketing.”

Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.