Nikola Jokic's brother appears in Denver court on assault charge after gameday fight

DENVER — A brother of Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic appeared in Denver County Court on a misdemeanor assault charge Wednesday after a gameday fight in April.

Strahinja Jokic, 42, was charged with third-degree assault after a video went viral on social media that appeared to show him punching a man in the face courtside at Denver’s Ball Arena during a game against the Los Angeles Lakers.

The punch followed a “verbal exchange,” police wrote in an affidavit. The fan who was punched spoke with police three days after the April 22 game. He suffered a concussion and cuts and bruises on his face. The fan initially did not want to press charges but later changed his mind, police said.

Strahinja Jokic was charged in late July. He told police he felt he had done nothing wrong because he was defending an older man he had known for a very long time.

On Wednesday, a Denver County Court judge put a protection order in place that requires 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 plea in the case.

The gameday fight is not Strahinja Jokic’s first run-in with Denver law enforcement. In 2019, he was charged with assault and accused of choking and pushing a woman, then preventing her from calling 911.

In that case, Strahinja Jokic pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstructing phone service, as well as a felony count of trespassing as part of a deferred sentence in which prosecutors agreed to eventually negate the trespassing conviction if he followed court rules for unsupervised probation and did not commit another crime for two years.

The trespassing charge was dismissed in 2022 after he successfully completed that term, court records show. The misdemeanor conviction stands. Charges of false imprisonment and assault against Strahinja Jokic were also dropped as part of the plea agreement in that 2019 case.