After the Denver Nuggets' championship parade on Thursday, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray will have decisions to make. The newly crowned NBA champions can take the next three months off from competitive basketball, so they can rest, recuperate and prepare for next season -- the healthy thing to do -- or they can commit to play for their respective national teams in the 2023 FIBA World Cup, like absolute sickos.
The FIBA World Cup begins runs from Aug. 25-Sept. 10 and takes place in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia. Jokic has historically been a mainstay on Serbia's senior national team -- he played in the Olympic qualifiers and the Olympics in 2016, the World Cup in 2019 and EuroBasket in 2022. This time, however, his status is unclear, and he has a family celebration scheduled during the tournament, according to The Athletic's Joe Vardon.
Murray does not have as much history suiting up for Canada's senior national team, but that's largely because of injuries. He played in the 2015 Pan-American games, and he injured his ankle just before national team training camp began in 2019. He tore his ACL in April 2021, but continued to be present with the team even when he was unavailable to play. His availability for the World Cup is also in question, per The Athletic.
"He's going about as far as he can go this year, it looks like," Team Canada coach Nick Nurse said on ESPN's "The Hoop Collective" podcast this week. "So it should be a short turnaround for him. But we'll see. He's always been very committed, and it's not been easy for him, obviously, with some of the injuries and stuff."
The Nuggets opened training camp on Sep. 27, 2022, and they raised the Larry O'Brien Trophy on June 12, 2023. During that 259-day grind, Jokic played 3,164 minutes in 92 games, including the preseason and postseason. Murray played 2,960 minutes in 87 games, coming off a torn ACL.
Everyone involved in the NBA Finals has earned a break, nobody more so than these two. If they sit out, though, then their respective national teams will be significantly weaker this summer, which could have consequences beyond the next couple of months. The simplest way to qualify for the 2024 Olympics is to earn one of the seven spots up for grabs (including two from the Americas and two from Europe) in the World Cup.
