Nikola Jokić continues to enter the inner circle of the greatest basketball players of all time. The Denver Nuggets’ otherworldly center won his third league MVP award on Wednesday night. He is only the ninth player to achieve this feat in the NBA, an achievement that often ends with players – LeBron, Jordan, Magic, Wilt – becoming mononyms. If Jokić had finished one spot higher in the voting in 2023, when he finished second to Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid, he would now be the only player to win the award four years in a row. Last year, he led the Nuggets, a historically mediocre franchise, to their first NBA championship.
At this stage in his career, it’s difficult to overstate Jokić’s excellence. The 29-year-old Serbian is a marvel of consistency, dominating his opponents almost every time he speaks. He is a scoring wizard, a creative savant and a rebounding threat. He even hits his free throws at a rate of over 80% every year, while making about 35% of his three-pointers. By doing all this, Jokić answers the question: “What if Shaquille O’Neal could shoot?” The 2015 second-round pick has gotten so good that almost no one bothers to debate whether he’s the best player alive. So far, this is taken for granted.
But he might not be good enough to lead the Nuggets back to the NBA Finals this year. Right now, Denver trails the Minnesota Timberwolves 2-0 in their best-of-seven Western Conference semifinals series. The first two games, played on the Nuggets’ home court, were shocking. The reason for the shock was not so much the fact that newcomers Wolves managed to win a few games, but rather the fact that Jokić and his teammates seemed so powerless to stop them from doing so. In Game 2 on Tuesday, a final score of 106-80 Somehow it didn’t do justice to how badly the Nuggets were beaten.
Over the first two games of the series, Minnesota exploited the only part of Jokić’s game that could be called a weakness: his defense. Jokić is 6-foot-3 and an astonishing athlete, but he expends a lot of energy being a singular offensive and rebounding force, and that occasionally shows when he’s defending his own basket. In Game 2, the Wolves closed by making eight of nine field goals in which Jokić was the main defender. They were a mix of pull-up jumpers, drive layups, dunks and fadeaways, and the common thread was that the Minnesota players weren’t afraid to go after the best player in the world.
In a symbolic sequence, Wolves star Anthony Edwards darted toward Jokić in transition, stopped for a three-pointer and missed. But Minnesota center Naz Reid simply dropped to the rim, passed Jokić and went in for a one-handed dunk while MVP watched.
Jokić had 16 points, 16 rebounds and eight assists on Tuesday because even on his worst nights, he remains prolific. But he was also disjointed. Their shots didn’t fall, their creative passes crossed the line and looked silly, and the Nuggets were surprised in a shocking display of offensive futility. Jokić is notoriously direct in his public comments, but when a reporter asked he responded how the Nuggets would respond in Game 3 in Minneapolis, he responded, “I don’t know. We will see.”
Jokic needs to find out something outside. The Nuggets are nearly at their limit and the T-Wolves appear well-equipped to play against Jokić, who has averaged 5.5 turnovers per game in this series. Added to that, Minnesota has not one great center, but two, in Karl-Anthony Towns, who improved their long-derided defense, and four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert (worryingly for the Nuggets, Gobert missed the game Tuesday). game to watch the birth of your child). If anyone can counter Jokić, it is this team, with its much-described “Twin Towers” that take turns against him and with Edwards leading the attack. And that’s before we arrive the suffocating defense of the rest of the team (watch how Reid frustrates Jokić in this sequence).
That said, Jokić’s presence is the main reason for not counting on the defending champions. On the rare occasions when he underperforms, he tends to take his anger full steam into the next game, which in this case will be on Friday. Jokić went 5-for-13 from the field in Game 2. The last time he had a terrible shooting game was March 17 in Dallas, when he went 6-for-16. Naturally, two nights later, Jokić went 14-for-22 and scored 35 points and 16 rebounds. The opponents that night were… those same Timberwolves, playing on the same court where Games 3 and 4 of this series will be played.
A comeback in this series, against a team with one of the league’s brightest youngsters in Edwards, would be a memorable moment in Jokić’s career. But a loss won’t be decisive – it will have more to do with the brilliance of Edwards and Minnesota’s excellent defense than Jokić’s shortcomings, along with the ill-prepared performances of teammates like Jamal Murray, who has struggled to shoot. and control your temper.
Next season, Jokić will try to win four MVPs in five years, something only Bill Russell and LeBron James have done. Jokić will be the overwhelming favorite for the honor at the start of the season, and at this point the only question is whether he will do so with two championship rings on his fingers or with one.
