The Balkans Boom

But the NBA’s Balkan boom spreads well beyond a few guys named Nikola. There’s Dragic, Nurkic, Saric, Marjanovic, multiple Bogdanovices, and many more. Players from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro dot rosters all across the NBA. In all, 14 of the league’s 450 current players are from the former Yugoslavia. And the two most famous, of course, are Jokic and Luka Doncic—the Slovenian who seems all but certain to someday follow in Jokic’s footsteps as the next Balkaner to win NBA MVP.