“I Am a Failure”: Nikola Jokic’s Question Left NFL Coach With Bitter Realization

Sean McVay has coached the Los Angeles Rams to a Super Bowl title. Yet it took one blunt question from Nikola Jokic to make him question his own legacy. Speaking to reporters this week, McVay was asked a simple question: does he still need a "get back coach," the staffer once tasked with physically hauling him away from the field? His answer was no. He then pinned the turnaround on a conversation with Nikola Jokic.

The Denver Nuggets star, whose franchise shares an owner with the Rams in Stan Kroenke, didn't hold back when the two crossed paths years ago. McVay admitted the exchange left him rethinking how the outside world actually saw him.

The story itself dates back to 2021, when Jokic won his first MVP award. "I go to a playoff game," McVay recalled. "They lost to the Suns at home, at Ball Arena. I go to the locker room afterwards and Nikola sees me. He says, 'Where is your get back coach?'" Caught off guard, McVay could only laugh at himself in the moment. "Golly, this is what the NBA MVP knows me as," he said. "I am a failure."

McVay's early years in Los Angeles were defined as much by his youth as by his manic sideline energy. His play-calling and word of his habit of drifting into live-action territory had clearly reached NBA locker rooms hundreds of miles away.

The "get back coach" wasn't a metaphor. Rams staffer Ted Rath spent years literally shadowing McVay on the sideline. He pulled him back by the shoulder whenever he strayed too close to the field of play and risked drawing a penalty.

Footage of Rath repeatedly pulling McVay back during games went viral and just like that, what was once an internal coaching quirk became a national talking point. Which is exactly how it eventually found its way to Jokic.

Now 40 and well into his tenure, McVay says that version of himself is mostly in the rearview mirror. He described himself as "not that much of" the hothead he used to be, someone who no longer needs Rath, or anyone else, to physically step in during games.

The Jokic encounter, he suggested, was a genuine turning point. It was the moment he realized his sideline behavior had become his defining trait in the eyes of people who had never watched him draw up a single play.

With the Rams set to open against the San Francisco 49ers, the coach who once needed a handler on the sideline is now laughing about it openly.

That says a lot, even an NBA MVP's offhand jab can leave a mark. And for all his success, McVay clearly hasn't forgotten the locker room moment that humbled him in a way no playoff loss ever quite did.