{"id":907537,"date":"2026-09-24T06:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907537\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T06:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T06:44:09","slug":"kukoc-breaks-down-jokic-doncic-giannis-i-will-never-admit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/907537\/","title":{"rendered":"Kukoc breaks down Jokic, Doncic, Giannis: \u201cI will never admit\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Johnny Askounis\/ info@eurohoops.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Toni Kukoc shared his thoughts on how European players have changed the NBA during a visit to the Croatian show Sport Nedjeljom<\/a>. The Hall of Famer balanced high praise for today\u2019s international stars with a firm defense of his own era.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack then, the paint was clogged with massive, traditional centers who dominated every single rebound,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThey praise Nikola Jokic, and rightfully so, he is a phenomenal basketball genius whose vision completely mesmerizes me. But Jokic is playing in an era where he doesn\u2019t have to face three physical defensive centers every game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJokic and Doncic possess high basketball IQ that comes from the European, Balkan school of fundamentals. They have the basics down to an absolute science, and their understanding of the game is far more advanced than the rest of the league,\u201d he continued on the Serbian and Slovenian superstars.<\/p>\n

However, Kukoc remains fiercely loyal to the pioneers of his generation, emphasizing that today\u2019s Most Valuable Players benefit from modern sports science, dietitians, and advanced recovery systems.\u00a0\u201cYou have Jokic, Doncic, and Giannis. OK, these are three players that were MVPs, great players,\u201d he asserted. \u201cI will never admit that today\u2019s players are better than Drazen, Dino, Divac, Sabonis, or Marculjonis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other topics included the documentary miniseries The Last Dance and on-court completeness, a standard he learned under Phil Jackson. The Split native and longtime special advisor to the Chicago Bulls<\/a>, the team with which he played a portion of his 945 career NBA games and won three championships from 1996 to 1998.<\/p>\n

Read the latest News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Johnny Askounis\/ info@eurohoops.net Toni Kukoc shared his thoughts on how European players have changed the NBA during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-907537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}