Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Denver faces growing questions despite Nikola Jokić maintaining elite offensive stats this season.
- Opponents are testing new defensive strategies, but Jokić's impact remains unchanged.
- The Nuggets' clutch struggles and shifting league narratives fuel doubts despite their contender status.
Nikola Jokić isn’t somebody you “stop,” he’s someone you limit. But amid speculation that the NBA may have developed a quasi-legal Jokić limiter: smaller guards and possibly-cheap physicality, I don’t think that is what’s wrong with the Denver Nuggets. In fact, I wonder if anything at all is wrong with the Nuggets, and echoing criticism has more to do with other teams and other star players than it does anything to do with Denver.
Marc Spears reporting the Nuggets may have voiced concerns with the league about how Jokic is being guarded is almost certainly just a health and safety measure — I see little to no evidence that the NBA adopting the Alex Caruso-will-beat-you-up playbook is actually reducing his offensive output; plainly, Jokic is not having a down year. He leads the league in rebounds and assists, boasts essentially the same PER and true shooting percentage from his MVP years and has managed a career high in box score plus minus.
Yes, his scoring is down from 29.6 to 28 points per game, and the only real offensive decrease is his 3-point percentage; perhaps a result of teams guarding him further from the basket. But that may actually be a positive for the Nuggets offensively —Jokić has thrown down his highest assist rate ever this year, and Jokić producing high-quality shots for his teammates is his superpower and his preferred way to impact the game. If left to his own devices, I bet Jokić would love to go 0-0 from the field and have 49 assists.
The Denver Nuggets have red flags, but not as many as you think
However, his team has had shockingly bad clutch performances this season and sits smack-dab in the middle of the Western Conference Quagmire Extravaganza featuring the Nuggets, Timberwolves and Rockets. It is tempting, then, to believe the Nuggets asking the NBA to look into how Jokić is being defended is a cry for help; rather, I think this is basically a non-issue, contrived off of narratives that make sense given the overall scope of the season.
The Nuggets are a team that relies heavily on taking and making jump shots. This is because Jokić can do so much damage from the middle of the floor, somehow able to throw radar-guided laser passes to anywhere within 40 feet of the basket from any angle. That reliance on jumpers is going to, eventually, bite back at you in the clutch, as if you miss a few in a row, suddenly your opponent is right back in it.
The Nuggets have not had a healthy Aaron Gordon (a critical player for them) for much of the season. But Jamal Murray is having a career year and might make his first All-NBA team. The Nuggets’ supporting cast is otherwise intact, and they just have to go 6-4 in their last 10 games to tie their record from last year.
I understand watching the Nuggets can be tough when they miss tons of shots. It feels like every big game comes down to a wide-open Cam Johnson three. But I haven’t quite understood the criticism at the scale it’s been levied. Frankly, I think it might be about everyone else.
Leaguewide narratives have changed how we think about the Nuggets
Nikola Jokić has had The Best-Player-in-the-World Belt — an ethereal, paranormal entity bestowed via NBA media osmosis every year — for the last three seasons since the Giannis Antetokounmpo fall off/fiasco/disaster began. This is the first time since he got The Belt that there is a real push to anoint a new player as the best. Your choices? Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama.
Those two, and their teams, have been the stories of the NBA season so far. They are tearing up the West and making everyone look at the future of basketball differently. It’s just hard to look at the Nuggets and card-carrying “best player in the league” Nikola Jokić and not be critical. They are doing basically what they did last year. Jokić is doing basically all the earth-destroying offensive things he has done for half a decade. But he’s just not the main character of the season, which begets criticism.
The Nuggets have also parked themselves in the Western Conference Quagmire Extravaganza while Luka Dončić, another stealth main character of the season, is lifting the Los Angeles Lakers to be a mortal lock for the three seed and thus avoid the Oklahoma City Thunder in round two. Why couldn’t Jokić?
Put simply, I think the team is good, and I don’t think the new guard-defense on Jokić has led to much visible or statistical downturn in his offensive output. The shifting of the league, however, has led to a downturn in narrative output for Denver. Such is the NBA, but I still think they are a contender and the third-best team in the West. Jokić can win any series he walks into — there is no other player in the league you can say that about with certainty.