The brother of Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic appeared in Denver County Court on Wednesday on a misdemeanor assault charge following a fight during a game in April.
Strahinja Jokic, 42, was charged with third-degree assault after a video has gone viral on social media which appeared to show him punching a man in the face on the courtside of Denver’s Ball Arena during a game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
The punch was delivered following a “verbal exchange,” police wrote in an affidavit. The fan who was punched spoke to police three days after the April 22 game. He suffered a concussion and cuts and bruises to his face. The fan initially did not want to press charges, but later changed his mind, police said.
Strahinja Jokic was charged in late JulyHe told police he believed he had done nothing wrong because he was defending an older man he had known for a long time.
On Wednesday, a Denver County District Court judge issued a protective order requiring Strahinja Jokic to stay away from the alleged victim in the case. He also ordered Strahinja Jokic to complete fingerprinting and return to court in October to enter a guilty plea in the case.
The game-day brawl isn’t the first time Strahinja Jokic has run afoul of Denver law enforcement. In 2019, he was charged with assault and accused of strangling and pushing a womanthen preventing him from calling 911.
In that case, Strahinja Jokic pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of obstructing telephone service, as well as a felony count of trespassing, as part of a suspended sentence in which prosecutors agreed to potentially vacate the trespassing conviction if he followed the court’s rules for unsupervised probation and did not commit another crime for two years.
The trespassing charge was dropped in 2022 after he successfully completed that sentence, court records show. The misdemeanor conviction stands. Charges of unlawful confinement and assault against Strahinja Jokic were also dropped as part of the plea deal in that 2019 case.
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