Nikola Jokic Has Never Been Tested Like This - The Ringer

The Denver Nuggets star just won his third Most Valuable Player award. He also faces perhaps the most daunting task of his career, down 0-2 to the hungry Minnesota Timberwolves. Can Jokic lift his team back into the series?

Getty Images/Ringer illustration

On Wednesday, Nikola Jokic became the ninth player in NBA history to win at least three MVP awards, joining a coterie of basketball legends: LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Moses Malone. Look at those names! It’s stunning company.

Now consider that this was Jokic’s third MVP in four years, and in the one season he didn’t take home the league’s most prestigious individual honor, he came in second and ended up winning his first Finals MVP. It’s a ridiculous stretch of dominance. At 29 years old, Jokic has the highest regular-season and postseason PER on record; he’s a mountainous efficiency machine who doubles as an all-time passer, strategist, and symbol of selfless basketball.

But this MVP comes at an awkward time, with Jokic’s Denver Nuggets down 0-2 against a ravenous Minnesota Timberwolves team that was constructed to humble them. This series deficit is unlike the Nuggets’ 2022 first-round bout against the Warriors or the infamous “Suns in four” sweep in the 2021 conference semifinals, when Denver was dramatically short-handed due to injuries. Besides Jamal Murray’s strained calf, which hasn’t kept him out of the action but helps explain the noticeable drop in production and potency, the Nuggets are at full strength. And still, Jokic is pressed in a way he hasn’t been in a long time, if ever.

Through two games, Jokic is averaging 24 points, 12 rebounds, and 8.5 assists with a pedestrian 54.3 true shooting percentage. Those are incredible numbers for pretty much anyone, but Jokic’s production belies a palpable discomfort that’s entirely foreign to his reign as the world’s best player. The three-time MVP can inflict pain on an opponent in so many ways—from the post, coming off a screen, orchestrating from the nail, or grabbing a rebound and going coast to coast—but he’s most devastating on the short roll, retrieving a pocket pass and tossing up a cotton ball that hugs the rim before falling through. That’s where most of his shots came from this year, and how most of those back-breaking lobs to Aaron Gordon are born. Plays like this have become synonymous with Denver’s success:

But that play from Game 1 is literally the only chance Jokic has had to nibble on his bread and butter. Instead, the Timberwolves keep tackling the waiter on his way to the table, deploying enough size, length, and effort to bother Jokic’s shots while also decapitating the head of Denver’s snake (Murray). During the regular season, Jokic made 61.7 percent of his attempts in the non-restricted area of the paint, and actually shot 62.8 percent against the Timberwolves. In this series, he’s just 4-for-14 in that floater-zone sweet spot where he typically eviscerates the defense’s hope.

It’s not like the Nuggets aren’t trying to look like the Nuggets. In the play from Game 2 seen below, they’re doing their best to stress Minnesota’s defense at the point of attack. But the action malfunctions before it can get off the ground. Despite Jokic waving Michael Porter Jr. toward the corner, MPJ doesn’t space all the way over, which lets Anthony Edwards stay higher up the floor and keep Murray from gaining an advantage. At the same time, Nickeil Alexander-Walker does a fantastic job trailing the ball over Jokic’s screen while Naz Reid is up to touch, waiting for a pocket pass Murray throws earlier than he usually does.

Murray has assisted only two Jokic baskets in the series so far. The first was in that pick-and-roll seen above. The second is below, a telling sequence where Jokic is proactive instead of his usual reactionary self—aggressiveness that’s key for Denver to get back in the series.

This is peak Denver. Jokic comes off Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s wedge screen and then immediately attacks an off-balance defender before a hard double-team can do anything to slow him down.

There hasn’t been nearly enough of that decisiveness. Minnesota has spent the first two games flustering an elite, singular, and seemingly unflappable offense that’s suddenly committing more unforced and (definitively) forced errors than they typically do. Denver’s 16.9 turnover rate is (a lot) worse than what the 30th-ranked Utah Jazz posted during the regular season. And the makeable shots they’re missing in the paint have been absolutely killer. It’s hard to know which mistakes are self-sabotage and which are because Minnesota’s defense is in Denver’s head. Are they missing layups and giving up easy baskets in transition because they’ve convinced themselves someone in a Timberwolves jersey is breathing down their neck? Possibly!

Possessions that were clean art during the regular season (and against the Lakers) are a discombobulated mess against the (second) house Tim Connelly built. Right now, Denver appears lethargic and antsy, two conflicting characteristics that Minnesota is happy to punish. Look at this slot cut by Christian Braun. Instead of Justin Holiday catching Jokic’s pass out of the double-team, forcing Alexander-Walker’s rotation, and then spraying a pass out to Porter in the weakside corner for a wide-open 3, Braun forces a traffic jam.

Offense and defense have a fascinating relationship in this series. The Nuggets aren’t typically desperate to attack in transition off missed shots, but it may be an essential part of any potential comeback. The issue there? Minnesota’s offense is really freaking good. Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns have played with poise, patience, and a knowing force the Nuggets haven’t been able to contain. That includes Jokic, whose margin for error has never been so narrow guarding the pick-and-roll.

Coming off a ball screen with a live dribble, Edwards is a loose pressure valve. If Jokic is up too high in an effort to take away the pull-up 3, Ant can either turn the corner or whip a pass that exploits Denver’s rotation. If Jokic is too low, an open jumper or runway into the paint spells trouble. If Jokic is in between, trying to have his cake and eat it too, he enters no-man’s land and the possession ends before it begins.

Overall, there are no easy answers. The Wolves are locked in on a brilliant, diversified game plan that has been in the works for over a year, when Minnesota was eliminated in last year’s first round sans Jaden McDaniels and Reid (two vital cogs in their system). One early response from Michael Malone in Game 2 was a series of inverted pick-and-rolls with Jokic as the ball handler, something they didn’t do much of in the first round against L.A. or Game 1 against Minnesota. It’s a good way to force at least one big out of the paint—two when Gordon sets the screen—and put the Timberwolves’ defense into a compromising rotation.

When Jokic is in the post—a sparkling, savage part of his skill set that almost always yields an efficient look for him or a teammate—Minnesota has sprinkled in several different coverages. Sometimes they stay home and force him to beat either Rudy Gobert, Towns, or Reid. Sometimes they send help before he can go to work. In these spots, the Nuggets have to trust the pass. Here, with Mike Conley rotating on a string to pick up Murray, the ball needs to immediately kick out to a wide-open Caldwell-Pope.

The Timberwolves want opponents to test them at the basket. They also want Jokic to shoot a bunch of shots. They do not want him getting everyone involved. The bad news for Denver is unless Murray looks like his vintage self, Jokic probably has to take and make more contested shots than he wants to, from outside the paint, behind the 3-point line, and at the hoop.

That’s what superstars do, of course. The playoffs are about overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges, outthinking intelligent opponents, and staying one step ahead. Time is running out on Denver’s ability to do this, against a defense that’s had the entire league in a chokehold since opening night. But if there’s any one player alive capable of lifting his team out from a shallow grave, it’s a freshly minted three-time MVP, officially cemented as one of the greatest to ever do it.

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