Yet the NBA, its players and much of the media never fully embraced him as the sport's premier figure.For years, ESPN commentators told us Jokic could not be the face of the NBA because he is European.They said the same about Luka Doncic.Apparently, those concerns no longer apply to Victor Wembanyama, who was born and raised in a suburb in west Paris.DAKICH: SPORTS MEDIA HAS CREATED AN ‘INDUSTRY’ OUT OF COMPLAINING ABOUT WHITE ATHLETES LIKE CAITLIN CLARKVictor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs reacts during the fourth quarter against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game Three of the NBA Western Conference Finals at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas, on May 22, 2026.
(Alex Slitz/Getty Images)Moments after the Spurs defeated the Thunder in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals, Kendrick Perkins declared on SportsCenter that Wembanyama is "the best thing that's happened to the NBA since LeBron James in 2003."In 2023, Perkins challenged MVP voters to prove they weren't favoring White or European players by voting for someone other than Jokic, even if he deserved the award.Voters responded by selecting Joel Embiid, a Black European.A year later, Perkins warned that "international players are taking over the game of basketball."Others voiced similar frustrations.
Before Jokic won his championship, Draymond Green told Gilbert Arenas that "European players have not caught the same flak of not winning a championship as American players, and I don't understand it."Even after Jokic delivered a title, many remained reluctant to acknowledge him as the world's best player.Former ESPN broadcaster Mark Jones said he could never view Jokic that way.
Arenas went further, openly calling on American-born players to "take out" and "remove" Europeans, like Jusuf Nurkic, from the game."They are takin' the league from our people," Arenas added.At the time, I argued that these anti-European narratives were actually a coded resistance to accepting White players as equal to, or ...