DENVER — For most of the past five years, Nikola Jokić has taken his game to such a high level that you are almost shocked when he actually misses a shot or makes a bad read offensively or doesn’t finish a play close to the basket. The mystique of his being almost universally thought of as the best player in the world involves his having no weakness offensively. Defensively? Sure, there are some flaws. But, offensively, he’s been the most complete player in basketball for years.
There have been small playoff defects. For instance, last year, Jokić’s 3-point shot abandoned him in the second round against the Minnesota Timberwolves. But he was still dominant at every other spot on the floor, so nobody thought much of his not shooting well from beyond the arc. There haven’t been all-out craters like what Jokić has experienced in this series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. He hasn’t looked this flustered, this out of sorts offensively, in quite a while. And it’s shaping up to be the story of this second-round matchup.
Even with Sunday afternoon’s 92-87 loss to the Thunder in Game 4, the Nuggets head back to OKC with a 2-2 series tie. It’s now a best-of-three, and the Nuggets have a real shot at advancing to the Western Conference finals. That they are in this position, with a rotation short of depth and short on health, is frankly amazing, given the way Jokić is playing. That being said, it doesn’t seem feasible to think Denver can win the series if Jokić’s performance on the aggregate doesn’t improve by a lot. And part of that comes with the assessment of what is going wrong.
“I mean, it’s a little bit of everything,” Jokić said of his struggles. “They are playing great defense on me. They are handsy and physical. I know that I missed two or three open looks tonight. They are doing a great job of shrinking the floor. They have a man on me, and they have a guard behind. I know that I have to do a better job going forward. But it’s a part of the game.”
In the last three games of the series, Jokić is shooting 30 percent from the field. He’s made four of his last 22 3-point attempts. He’s averaging 21.3 points over those three games, down from 29.6 during the regular season. He’s averaging almost six turnovers per game in the series, when he averaged just over two in the regular season. He’s averaged five assists per game in the series, when he averaged 10.2 in the regular season. He shot 57.6 percent from the field in the regular season, which makes it beyond a shock to see him shooting 30 percent over a sample of three games. To say he hasn’t been himself is overstating it. He simply has not been good enough.
Denver won Game 3 because Aaron Gordon, Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Murray each scored at least 20 points, which went a long way toward subduing the struggles of Jokić. That kind of output against an elite defensive team like Oklahoma City was never going to be sustainable, but the Nuggets have been good enough around Jokić, which means it’s incumbent on him to bring wins home.
In Sunday’s Game 4, Denver took a 6-point lead into the fourth quarter. Jokić took a short rest at the beginning of the fourth and came back with the Nuggets holding a 73-72 advantage. That’s when a closer has to close the game. Instead, the Nuggets scored 18 points total in the last 12 minutes, and Oklahoma City was able to effectively save its season.
“They are doing a good job on him,” Denver guard Christian Braun said. “They have a lot of athletic defenders on that team.”
Jokić’s performance in Game 1, in which he scored 42 points and grabbed 22 rebounds, is proof positive he’s capable of dominance against this Oklahoma City team. But the Thunder have frustrated Jokić in ways the league hasn’t seen in quite some time.
Isaiah Hartenstein and Chet Holmgren are playing terrific point-of-attack defense on Jokić in isolation. To complement those two, the Thunder are using the burly Jaylin Williams to come in and push him around physically. The Thunder are waiting until Jokić puts the ball on the floor and then sending double-teams with Lu Dort, Cason Wallace and Alex Caruso. OKC has done a terrific job of taking away spacing in the paint, essentially leaving Russell Westbrook wide open on the perimeter and living with the results when he shoots. The Thunder have been as physical with Jokić as whatever the officiating crew that night will allow, which on most nights in this series has been quite a bit.
That’s where the turnovers and the bad reads have come from. As good as Jokić was in Game 1, he had seven turnovers. He had eight turnovers in Game 3, a game that Denver won. He hasn’t been able to find a rhythm against Oklahoma City’s defense. Worse for him and the Nuggets, he’s seemed unsure of how to attack the Thunder. The best parts of his series have involved the parts where thinking and analyzing haven’t been involved. In the second half and overtime of Game 3, Jokić put his head down and went to the basket. He missed some shots, sure. But by doing that, he bent OKC defensively and created scoring chances for himself or a teammate. In Game 1, he was able to make shots and get to his spots.
Jokić has seldom not been able to figure out a defense. Even in Denver’s first-round win over the LA Clippers, when the Clippers befuddled Jokić in the first half of the series, Jokić eventually figured out what the Clippers wanted to do and found counters to it.
“I’m sure Nikola is frustrated by some things,” Denver interim coach David Adelman said. “But we are going to go back and watch the film and see what we can do.”
It might be as simple as making a conscious decision to keep as much shooting on the floor as possible around Jokić. That would mean less Westbrook in Denver’s rotation, but that move might be a necessary one. If the Thunder are going to concede shots to Denver’s role players, the Nuggets are going to need to have shooters on the floor. As in the Clippers series, the Nuggets might have to make Jokić a moving target again within the half-court offense. OKC will have a harder time tagging him defensively if he’s not stationary.
A lot of this is on Jokić himself. As he said, he is going to have to be better. Deep into the fourth quarter Sunday, with a chance to pull the Nuggets within 2 points, he missed two free throws, and OKC scored on its ensuing possession. The game going from an expected 2 points with three minutes remaining to an actual 6 points represented a swing the Nuggets wouldn’t recover from.
What this means is Jokić might represent a swing in this series. When asked whether fatigue has been a factor with him, he emphatically said no. So the question is, can he fight through the struggles and get back to his dominant self? Because that seems to be Denver’s easiest path to winning the series. The role players have been terrific to this point. Gordon has been great for the entire playoff. Westbrook has been relatively terrific. Porter had his moment in Game 3. And Murray has been very good as well.
“They have been very good defensively,” Jokić said. “They are very physical. They have been coming with double-teams. I missed some open looks. I missed two free throws, so I think we had our chances. I just think we basically didn’t make shots.”
(Photo of Nikola Jokić, Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)