How strong is Nikola Jokic?

[elementally morale]

He's a big-boned guy. You're focusing too much on muscle and not enough on the frame. His legs are also relatively short, indicating a proportionately large torso and low center of gravity. He has a barrel torso and is very wide across the shoulders.

Like Tyson Fury, he just doesn't have excessive muscle mass that is visually/aesthetically pleasing. This means things like insertion points and muscle separation. He does, however, have a lot of muscle simply because he's a large human being. Larger bones have larger muscle mass - at baseline and maximal relative amounts.

I agree with all that. It still is kinda surprising. Not that he is strong... he is huge. But the fact he is actually stronger than guys as big as him. Or at least appears to be stronger in practice while looking weaker.

[Im Still Ballin]

I agree with all that. It still is kinda surprising. Not that he is strong... he is huge. But the fact he is actually stronger than guys as big as him. Or at least appears to be stronger in practice while looking weaker.

I imagine that growing up on a farm has a lot to do with it. His build and strength on the court remind me of big farmers. Like wrestling Olympic gold medalist Rulon Gardner, who was raised on a dairy farm.



I think we underrate how important upbringing is when it comes to physical development. The "grew up on a farm" factor is legit when it comes to sports.

[warriorfan]

To me an NFL example of this is Deebo Samuel. He is a strong dude i’m guessing 6 feet and 200 - 215 pounds. But he plays much bigger than that. He runs like a freight train and defenders bounce off of him. There’s some x factor there.

[post]

super strong

[tpols]

He's a big-boned guy. You're focusing too much on muscle and not enough on the frame. His legs are also relatively short, indicating a proportionately large torso and low center of gravity. He has a barrel torso and is very wide across the shoulders.

Like Tyson Fury, he just doesn't have excessive muscle mass that is visually/aesthetically pleasing. This means things like insertion points and muscle separation. He does, however, have a lot of muscle simply because he's a large human being. Larger bones have more muscle mass - at baseline and maximal relative amounts.

It's like comparing a grizzly bear to a tiger. Tigers have a much lower body fat %.

Grizzly bears have a lot of fat on their immense skeletal frames. Their muscle isn't visible yet they're unbelievably strong.

[j3lademaster]

Adams is the strongest per the players. I’m sure Jokic is up there, but I doubt he’s stronger than Embiid. Jokic is a master of creating leverage for himself. He makes a quick step or spin to get you slightly off balance before he overpowers you. Sometimes you play against a big dude who you can’t back down, if you constantly move and force them to shift their weight in order to anticipate you, you can find opportunities to overpower them.

[BarberSchool]

Got that Tyson Fury type strength.

If the Nuggets can do what I think they will, and win the chip this year, that comparison will be in every hood in America. Jokic will be the Tyson Fury of the NBA. Similar body fat levels, don’t look particularly strong at all, but they just can’t lose. Even when down bad, they come back.

Jokic in the weight room can’t lift what most other NBA centers can lift, but since he’s Slavic/central-eastern-European, I don’t doubt that his tendon and ligament strength are very very good/durable, and that his natural ability to instinctively use lots of leverage and throw his weight around catch most other players on the floor by surprise. His arms and hands aren’t muscular at all, and his hands have fine touch, but he instinctively knows how to leverage Mass big time, and his bone density, wide heavy shoulders, big rib cage, and wide heavy hips and heavy legs, make him immovable in the same way Kevon Looney is.

Plus, he has to have some great natural ability in a scrap, given his pro kickboxer/mma older brother probably toughened his little chubby kid self up frequently. Also being mentally tough and growing up in a genocidal warzone in the 90’s will create very strong mental strength in all who don’t get crushed by the trauma of death and danger around them.

So short answer is NO. He is def not weight room strong. But he has all the unseen intangible elements of strength, and has a lot of mass to throw around.

[elementally morale]

Adams is the strongest per the players. I’m sure Jokic is up there, but I doubt he’s stronger than Embiid. Jokic is a master of creating leverage for himself. He makes a quick step or spin to get you slightly off balance before he overpowers you. Sometimes you play against a big dude who you can’t back down, if you constantly move and force them to shift their weight in order to anticipate you, you can find opportunities to overpower them.

Makes sense. Sumo in a way. If Jokic packed another 150 pounds hu could be a great sumo practitioner.

[Im Still Ballin]

Jokic could be a World's Strongest Man contender if he lifted weights and juiced up. Hafthor Bjornsson was a naturally much smaller guy than Nikola and he became the most dominant ever maybe in strongman. Same with Brian Shaw - another basketball player turned GOAT-level strongman.







It's like what was said about Andre The Giant:

Asked about Andre's physical abilities, Valois hesitates a moment, then says, "Listen, I tell you this not because Andre is almost a son to me, but because it is true. Many men were afraid to go in the ring with him, especially after he reached his twenties, because he was so large and strong. For all his height and weight, he could run and jump and do moves that made seasoned wrestlers fearful. Not so much fearful that he would hurt them with malice but that he might hurt them with exuberance. He was incroyable. Even his playing was like that.

He discovered one day in Paris that he could move a small car by himself, and for quite a while after that he amused himself by moving his friends' cars while they were having a meal or a drink, placing them in a small space between a lamppost and a building, or turning them around to face the other way. His strength was so natural to him that he had no interest in lifting weights. He was interested in having a joke on his friends, not in showing how strong he was. I have lived among strong men all my life. I come from Quebec, the cradle of strongmen, home of Louis Cyr and the six Baillargeon brothers, but I have never seen a man with the raw strength of Andre."

Perhaps this could all be dismissed in light of the often hyperbolic nature of one friend's memory of another, except for the validation of people like Ken Patera, four-time U.S. national weightlifting champion and still the U.S. record holder in the superheavyweight clean and jerk and total.

Patera was the first American to clean and jerk 500 pounds, and many knowledgeable observers consider him to have been stronger than the Soviet Union's legendary Vasily Alexeyev during the early 1970s, when they vied for the world and Olympic championships. Standing 6'1" and often weighing well over 300 pounds, Patera entered professional wrestling following the Munich Olympics. He has wrestled Andre often and has seen him work on many cards. Patera is a rugged man from a rugged family, and he understands strength as few men do.

"Let's put it this way," he responded recently to a question about the Brobdingnagian Frenchman. "I honestly believe that if Andre took a couple of years away from the game to train like the top lifters do, and if he developed a close personal relationship with his friendly neighborhood pharmacist, the world powerlifting records in both the squat and the deadlift would fall. No question. Think about it. He already weighs almost 500 pounds, with no lifting and no help from steroids. Hell, he'd weigh 600 or 700 pounds and not be any fatter than he is now, and let me tell you, that's not very damn fat. He's a wonder of nature. I've seen him pick up a 250-pound guy like you'd pick up your overcoat. I guess you know what he did to Wepner."

[plowking]

Mass in a lot of ways is equal to strength. He is a heavy guy.

Underrated athlete, big torso, big lungs, etc. He has a quick first step, but pair that with great static strength. Someone who is hard to move because as someone said for such a tall guy, he has a low centre of gravity.

He makes the other guys carry his weight during the game well. He is constantly leaning, pushing and just making guys move him, and he tires them out over the course of the game.