Nikola Jokic is a great passer, and I’m not implying that he should stop passing, but what we saw here tonight is evidence that his scoring has been being held back by the fact that he needs to get his teammates involved for the team to be successful as a whole. Tonight, someone else stepped up in the assists department, someone named Jamal Murray (who apparently is not a point guard) who got 15 of them, and Jokic was free to do his thing, which consists of these actions:
-Abusing DeAndre Jordan
-Abusing Dwight Powell
-Abusing Rick Carlisle
-Abusing Luka Doncic
-Abusing anyone else on the Mavericks who happened to foolishly get in the way of his gigantic booty coming to score on them
I’ve pointed out the Nuggets’ near-total lack of a point guard before. Literally their only one right now is Monte Morris, and he doesn’t start, and he’s more of a “never turn the ball over ever” role-playing PG than a “rack up dimes like prime Tim Frazier” role-playing PG. Denver is obviously doing quite well without needing a true PG in the starting lineup, but maybe that’s just because their talent level (with Jokic, obviously, being the main factor) is so high? Maybe they could be better with Morris starting? Or just tell Murray to get 15 assists every game like this one wasn’t some sort of crazy anomaly.