"They didn’t believe in the fat boy, and it seems like it worked out… Yeah, don’t bet against the fat boy." - Nikola Jokic
It all began with American football.
In the only sport with 300-pound men running around, it helps to have some cushion on your bones. So when Tom Brady showed up to the NFL combine looking like a middle-aged accountant, he wasn’t immediately laughed out of the room. In fact, Bill Belichick famously spent the 199th pick of the draft on him.
As Bill clearly knew, and we know now, Tom Brady had the physique most resistant to crashes: the silent generation dad bod.
It is the same body-type that allows Clint Eastwood to do movies in his 120’s. It is also the same one that allows Joe Biden to fall headlong off his bike in his 80’s.
It’s the “I don’t like food” dad bod; a slim-but-wide frame, invented by the Silent Generation back before food was good. Something about its particular dimensions allows it to absorb shock over time better than, say, the Bo Jackson physique or the Robert Griffin III physique. Thus, Tom Brady could win super bowls until he was almost 50, and Joe Biden can zoom around on his bike at 80. It wasn’t their love of avocado ice cream, it was their unconventional physique.
Today, of course, Tom Brady is finally retired. Yet there are plenty of younger dad bod quarterbacks to carry the torch. His eventual replacement in New England, Mac Jones, has an uncannily similar silhouette to the GOAT. As does his backup, Bailey Zappe.
Zoomers do appear to have a puffier take on the silent generation’s model. Time will tell if this is a genuine improvement, or just a consequence of DoorDash being a thing now.
The new 49ers quarterback, Sam Darnold, has developed his own Jim Gaffigan look in preparation for a potential starting role in San Fransisco.
Despite having three chiseled, supremely athletic quarterbacks on the roster (Trey Lance, Brock Purdy, and Jimmy Garoppolo) the 49ers had to sign this Pilsbury doughboy too, because all three of their athletic specimens got injured in the same season. Meanwhile, despite the fact that he screws up often and can’t outrun anyone, the Darnold train just keeps plodding along. Sometimes the best ability is availability.
You might not expect the dad bod advantage to translate to other sports. Sports where you don’t play against weaponized humans… but you would be wrong. The dad bods just get taller.
Denver Nuggets baller Nikola Jokic is now an NBA champion and a Finals MVP. But you wouldn’t know it if you saw him in the street. He looks like someone you’d expect to see bragging about his glory days at the office water cooler… not in the NBA finals, winning MVP.
Nikola Jokic is rocking the Balkan dad bod. He is a meathead of gigantic proportion, in whose shadow nothing good nor godly could ever grow. Shoutout to Mama Jokic, because Nikola could not have been easy. He looks like the kind of kid you have to hose off in the driveway after a big dinner.
Today, he’s a bully in the paint of the NBA, and a world champion. Jokic’s Balkan build retains the resilience of the silent generation build, keeping him on the court while others fight injuries. Yet he is also capable of delivering the punishment, which is a canny improvement to the more defensive-minded dad bods before him.
He commands the post seemingly with ease, wearing down his much more “athletic” opponents. I mean, no disrespect, but he barely has discernible biceps. Watching him back down Anthony Davis is an incredible sight.
Most of the time, you’ll find Jokic standing tall in the pocket, utilizing his excellent court vision to pick apart defenses. Not unlike Tom Brady once did.
The scary thing is, he could last just as long.
Jokic’s play-style and Balkan dad bod set him up for success for decades to come. He doesn’t depend on youthful athleticism to get buckets, and his play style doesn’t put him in positions to get injured. In the inevitable instances he is in that position, he has an extra half-inch of padding between his critical tendons and the hardwood floor.
Assuming defenses don’t suddenly figure him out, the Serbian sensation has a long, Tom Brady-like future ahead of him in the NBA.
