I had some serious doubts about continuing to highlight Nikola Jokic on this channel (a channel ostensibly for the advancement of the role-player cause), because he was already at 19 points per game last year and I figured he would just go up from there. Little did I know that he would stage a little mini-protest (against what, I do not know) and stop shooting for a whole chunk of games. Now he’s averaging way fewer points, on worse efficiency, so we’re in the clear!
That’s if you just look at raw point totals, which is what any sane fan should be doing. If you look at advanced stats, he’s the league leader in many of them, indicating that he’s still doing a lot of things right even if his threes aren’t going in anymore. I mean, he’s getting more assists than ever, despite Kenneth Faried not being around to catch his lobs anymore and Paul Millsap not being up to the task of replacing that lob-catching ability.
Jokic pretty much totally dominated the Raptors in the first half, took a little break during the fourth quarter, and then came back right at the end to give them “The Serbian Special”, which is where he drops his shorts and slaps them around with his dong. He didn’t literally do that, because that would be grounds for suspension, but he did it metaphorically.