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NBA ALL-STAR 2019

February 16, 2019

Nikola Vucevic

Charlotte, North Carolina

Q. What does it mean to you to be selected?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: It means everything. Being here selected as an All-Star, I know it's a huge reward. Being selected with the best players in this league, it's a huge thing. I know it's hard to put into words. Now that I'm here, it really starts to hit me to see how big of a deal it is.

Yeah, I'm very happy to be here. I've had a good year, thanks to my teammates and my coaches, I've been able to be selected. Huge honor, and I'm very happy to be here.

Q. Do you have a favorite All-Star memory?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: As a kid, my favorite part was Saturday night and the Dunk Contest and the Three-Point Contest, mostly the Dunk Contest. My favorite memory is always Vince Carter's Dunk Contest. Huge fan of that. Still to this day, I'll go and rewatch it on YouTube.

Q. Do you think he should be here?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: He should be here? Of course.

Q. Would you like it?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: Sure. He was a great player, and I think he could do pretty good in the Dunk Contest too.

Q. The Magic have been playing well coming into the break. Do you think the break is coming at a bad time?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: I don't think so necessarily. I think we needed the break. It's been obviously a lot of teams, and everybody played a lot of games. I think it's good to have a little break, regroup, and come back. Maybe it could also come at a good time. We have a great stretch, now we recover and rest a little bit and get back to work.

I think we feel good about ourselves. I know we have good confidence within ourselves. I think this break will give us a good chance to regroup, and when we come back, we'll be fresh and good to go for the rest of the season.

Q. The celebration in the locker room [after he was named an All-Star] and all that good stuff, what did that mean to you?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: That meant so much to me, even before the actual announcement, days leading up to it, they kept telling me, you know, "You're going to get selected. You deserve it." The guys on social media were posting stuff to support me, talking to the media about it. When you have the support from your teammates, it means so much because they're the ones who see you every day. They know how you are, how much work you put into the game. When I see that they respect me like that and they want me to succeed like that, it means so much to me.

And it shows we have a good group of guys and guys that are tight together. That celebration made the moment even more special, except that the water was really cold.

Q. How long have you known [Nikola] Jokic?
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: I've known him a little bit before he came to the NBA. We met once he came here. I was already here for a couple of years, and it was his first year. When we first met, I talked to him a little bit, kind of help him out. He's doing great now.

I'm very happy for him. He's a great guy. We connected pretty easily. We're similar guys. Whenever we play against each other, the night before, we'll try to do dinner or catch up a little bit. It's fun to be here on the same team with him and spend some time. He's a good guy, and his family is great people as well. I'm very happy for him and his success.

Q. On him and Jokic pronouncing their first names differently:
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: Because I'm from Montenegro and he's from Serbia, and we have different accents. It's the same name. We just pronounce it differently.

Q. On Michael Jordan:
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: To me, he'll always be the player. I grew up a huge Michael Jordan fan. To me, he's the greatest player of all time. He's the one that made basketball what it is today. So to me, he'll always be the basketball player.

Q. On Jokic's game:
NIKOLA VUCEVIC: Just a player with a very, very high basketball IQ, so very skilled. He can do so many things as a big man that you don't see a lot of big men do. His passing makes it very hard with the players that he has around him, for other teams to defend it because he can involve everybody. I think that's his main thing. He's so smart. He plays the right way. He makes the game easier for everybody. He makes his teammates better. When you need him to score, he can score, but he's such a willing passer, that it puts so much pressure with all the shooting they have.

Whenever we hang out, it's a good time. He's a guy that likes to have fun, likes to joke around.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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