You know, after all those high-20s/mid-30s games Nikola Jokic has had recently, these 19 points just seem lackluster. Only 19 points and 3 dimes for a guy who has shown himself to be a legitimate scoring threat as well as an excellent setup man. Objectively, my brain knows that his stats were low because he sat the whole fourth quarter, having thoroughly dominated the Clippers with the aid of his teammates. But my heart listens not to my brain. My heart wants 30 points and 7 assists every game, no matter the circumstances. But do not let my lack of hype diminish your own. These are some pretty nice highlights.
The Nuggets commentators brought up an interesting point; The Joker is being gameplanned for now, and we have to see if he can adapt. Teams will be playing the backdoor cut heavily, knowing that it’s how Jokic does a lot of his damage. My solution to that being taken away is to just pop a jumper every time instead, but I’m not a coach. That’s probably not the best way to go about things.
Anyway, if teams put forth significant effort to stop him, we may have seen the end of 30-point games for the time being. Maybe. But also maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see. There were probably teams who thought they figured out how to stop MJ at some point.