Egads! I almost let this nice set of Roko quotes pass without posting. From Fes’s musings about NBA luxury living:

But NBA-style luxury is relatively new to a handful of Raptors. For Roko Ukic, the 23-year-old rookie who honed his game in Croatia’s lower-pro rungs, life wasn’t always thus.

“We stayed in some bad places. It just was terrible, terrible. You cannot imagine,” Ukic was saying last month. “No TV. Cockroaches. No curtains on the windows, so you wake up at 5 a.m. …”

[...]

Perhaps [the luxury] is a small reason why Ukic left money on the table overseas to test himself(and spoil himself a little) in the NBA.

“It’s easy to get used to the good things,” said Ukic, smiling. “Now, if they don’t put out the food(on the private plane) fast enough, you say, ‘Hey, where is the food?’ It becomes normal very quick.”

He smiled and glanced at the scouting report in his lap.

“I enjoy it, but I would trade all this food, all these luxury hotels, for one good game,” Ukic said. “At the end of the day, everything is about the basketball court. So you can have everything, but if you play bad, you feel bad. If you play good, you can stay in the worst hotel in the world, you can eat the worst food in the world, and it would make you happy.”

I love the humility and candor Roko shows. Let’s hope he also shows he belongs in the NBA.