Nikola Jokic is naturally the kind of player that warrants attention across the NBA, the best players in the league often do, and Jokic's contract situation with the Denver Nuggets will be one to watch closely in the coming years as he's put off extension negotiations with the Nuggets for the second offseason in a row. 

This upcoming season will be the last guaranteed contract on Jokic's current contract, with a player option available to the season after that, so he could plausibly a free agent as soon as next offseason, especially if the Nuggets begin a decline with their budget so constrained by expensive contracts.

In that case, the NBA will be set on fire with speculation about where Jokic could wind up next. But that next destination doesn't necessarily have to be within the NBA. 

One EuroLeague team owner in particular has been in hot pursuit of Jokic for a while now and even after being rebuffed by Jokic's camp once before, he's continued to public pleadings to bring the Serbian superstar to his side.

Dimitrious Giannakopoulos, a Greek businessman and the owner of the Athens-based Panathinaikos B.C. of the EuroLeague, has previously approached Jokic's representation to see if the generational center would be willing to consider a move to Greece, but that attempt was unsuccessful. 

Still, Giannakopolous made another declaration of his desire for Jokic in a recent interview, adding that Jokic helped him find his love for the NBA again, a love that had left him since Michael Jordan's retirement, apparently. 

"I believe he's [Jokic] top ten players of all time. I would love to see him in a Panathinaikos jersey and I'm going to do whatever I can to try and do it," Giannakopolous said (via HoopsHype). "The politics are difficult. I don't think it's a matter of teams. I think it's a matter of the NBA maybe not allowing such a huge star to come here."

Jokic deciding to pack up and head to the EuroLeague when he still has several good years in him at least to keep playing at a high level would be a wild move, something on par with Jordan's first retirement to try his hand at Major League Baseball. 

But Giannakopolous' suspicion  that the NBA itself is involved in somehow prohibiting Jokic from leaving the NBA seems to be off base. 

Players have left the NBA for the EuroLeague in the past, though not when they still had viable chances at re-signing at the NBA level, and there isn't anything codified into law that could prevent Jokic from leaving if he truly wanted to. 

The real obstacle in Giannakolopous' pursuit is the finances involved. 

Jokic alone may made more than double the entire Panathinaikos payroll last season and he'll continue to annual paydays of that size for years to come in the NBA. 

There simply isn't another professional basketball league in the word that come even close to the value and profitability of the NBA and no matter how passionate Giannakopolous may be about signing Jokic, he simply can't afford him.