Montenegrin professional basketball player Petar Popovic lavished praise on Tennis superstar Novak Djokovic and hailed his selflessness.

Montenegrin professional basketball player Petar Popovic lavished praise on Tennis superstar Novak Djokovic and hailed his selflessness.

It is no secret that Djokovic has built himself a controversial reputation throughout the years as a result of several scandals and high-profile setbacks. He has already been in the eye of the storm several times this year already because of his hugely infamous choice to not get vaccinated.

Djokovic has maintained his highly controversial and unpopular stance on the matter and it has cost him a lot of popularity points with the general public as well as tennis fans, including several of his own followers.

The Serbian tennis champion was infamously even deported from Australia whose vaccine policies didn’t allow Djokovic to stay in the country and as a result, he couldn’t participate in the Australian Open. ‘Djoker’ became the talk of the tennis world because of it and pictures of him posing with kids emerged even though he was said to be symptomatic with COVID during then.

For the same reason, the Serbian phenomenon also had to give up all the American Masters 1000 (Indian Wells, Miami, Montreal, and Cincinnati) as well as the coveted US Open.

Even at the Roland Garros in France, Djokovic didn’t progress beyond the quarter-finals. However, he bounced back strongly during the Wimbledon and defeated Nick Kyrgios in the final to win Wimbledon for the seventh time in his career, equalling the legendary Pete Sampras’ record. It was also his 21^st Grand Slam title, and he’s now one short of Rafael Nadal’s 22.

Despite being criticized and scorned in the media constantly, Petar Popovic called Djokovic one of the most selfless players on the circuit on a podcast hosted by Craig Shapiro.

“I know them very well because we are a small country and we have traveled together and I have known Novak Djokovic since he was very young. The first thing that I’ll say about Novak is that for me, he is the best tennis player in helping others.

“He’s amazing. He was fighting for players who are ranked 100-150, which he didn’t need to do. He also has a national center here and he’s giving free practice to the best of Serbians and Croatians.”