Nikola Topic has made his NBA debut for the Oklahoma City Thunder four months after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer.
Topic, 20, returned to the court on Thursday, February 12, for the Thunder’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks. The match-up resulted in a 110-93 defeat for the Thunder.
Topic received a standing ovation from the home crowd when he entered the game.
The game marked Topic’s first official regular-season NBA event for the Thunder, who drafted him in the first round of the 2024 draft. (The Serbia native missed the 2024-2025 season due to an ACL injury.)
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Topic received his cancer diagnosis shortly after playing in the Thunder’s first preseason game of the 2025-26 season. He underwent a round of chemotherapy and returned to training in January.
“[Topic] didn’t want to make this information public until he had begun the actual treatments, which he has,” the Thunder’s general manager Sam Presti said in October 2025 as Topic began chemo. “He’s been in here, he’s training, he’s working out through this entire process. As we all know, this would be a challenging treatment process to go through.”
The Thunder announced in early October 2025 that Topic would miss four to six weeks to start this season after a “testicular procedure,” but they did not provide further details.
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Presti, 47, revealed in his statement that the procedure was necessary to determine whether he had testicular cancer, while a biopsy confirmed his diagnosis. He also said that doctors were “extremely positive” about his prognosis.
“Our only expectations for him are to focus on this,” Presti continued. “This is his most important priority. He’ll be back playing basketball when he’s able to, but we’re not putting any time length or expectations on that, obviously. He has our total support, encouragement and love. He has a tremendous group of oncologists both at OU, at MD Anderson, and they are extremely positive about his outlook in dealing with this situation.”
Presti concluded, “[Topic] is a really remarkable, remarkable guy. I think everybody knows that, that’s been around him. Extraordinarily mature, composed, resilient. He has all the tools that you could ask for somebody to take on and conquer the situation.”
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Topic previously got candid about how it felt to miss last season amid his ACL injury.
“It was hard, you know? I didn’t play a basketball game for a very long time, and that was really hard,” he said in a video shared by the Thunder via YouTube in July 2025. “But, as you go through that process, you learn something about yourself that you didn’t know you had. You didn’t know how strong you were and how human bodies are strong. I’ll say I took the positives from it and learned from it.”
Topic continued, “I feel good now. It was a little bit rough at the beginning, especially at the back-to-back. It was pretty weird that I had to play back-to-back games. I don’t know, it was weird. I didn’t know what to do; sleep, take a nap. It was really weird, but I’m getting used to it.”