Miami Heat forward Nikola Jovic and the Serbian men’s basketball team picked up their first-ever Olympic bronze medal Saturday with a 93-83 win over Germany.
It marked the second consecutive year that Germany and Serbia met up in their final game. The two countries played for the Gold Medal in the 2023 FIBA World Cup, where Germany secured an 83-77 win.
Serbia, appearing in their fifth-ever Olympics, has now medaled three times in their country’s history for men’s basketball 5v5; it earned Silver Medals in both the 1996 Olympics (USA) and 2016 Olympics (Brazil).
Jovic played sparingly throughout the 2024 Paris Olympics, nursing a foot injury he suffered in summer workouts earlier this offseason. After an encouraging World Cup last year, he played in five of their six games, averaging 4.2 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 10.9 minutes. He converted on seven of his 16 shot attempts and four of his six 3-pointers.
He played 18 minutes apiece twice against Puerto Rico and South Sudan in their latter two group stage games. Though he only played five combined minutes in the knockout stage, including two measly minutes against Germany on Saturday, recording just one rebound.
Who knows how much his playing time getting cut was reflective of his overall impact in those three Group Stage games versus them not wanting to make the injury worse. Jovic said he felt “great,” over a week ago, but sometimes you have to protect the player from himself … especially when the organization he plays for will need him to be healthy when training camp rolls around in October.
Those are the types of conversations I wish I was a fly on the wall for between the player, coach and team–assuming there was communication there. Nevertheless, congratulations to Jovic for securing the Bronze!
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