NBA Powerless Rankings: Trying to stop Nikola Jokic passes

5. All the way down

The Denver Nuggets got off to a rough start this season. They were 1-3 which is a losing record, and losing records aren’t good. People tend to overreact to things in the beginning of the season. A rough four-game stretch isn’t especially notable when there are months of season to go, but carries a bit more weight when those are the only four games you have to go on.

The biggest concern was Jokic. In those four games he had an outing of zero points and one with zero assists. That was his big thing last year: assists. Zero is low, and low counting stats aren’t good. If Jokic isn’t running the offense, then what was historically good last year just becomes whatever-ish. What are the Nuggets if they can’t get better than just that? What would defenses do if they were allowed to take their focus elsewhere?

Luckily, we didn’t have to figure that out. We are now about a month into the season, and Jokic is back doing Jokic-y things again. Defenses didn’t figure him out. In fact, defenses can do very little. One might say they’re powerless.

Watch that clip above. What does one even do in this situation? This wasn’t a live ball turnover or a rebound that careered to directly to a player already running down court. Jokic jumped up, landed with two two feet, faced backwards, glanced up, and within a second had the ball on Gary Harris’ fingertips. Unless you want to sprint backwards on defense directly after a ball is shot, there’s not much you can do.