Four months in, Nikola Jokic’s personal goal for this season is going about as well as most New Year’s Resolutions.
No more arguing, he vowed in November. “That’s my new thing this year,” he said. “I’m not gonna get stressed or yell at the refs or whatever. I’m just gonna try to comport my energy to the basketball place.”
He kept his word, at least for the next few weeks. But since he returned from a knee injury, frustration has been bubbling back up inside him. He might’ve taken some of it out on the Thunder last Friday. But on Monday, his visible annoyance was directed at the officials all night during a narrow Nuggets win over the Jazz. Denver’s three-time MVP was held to 22 points, 12 rebounds, five assists and three turnovers — pedestrian numbers for him on a night he spent complaining often.
Not exactly by chance, those complaints coincided with a familiar defensive strategy that he’s seen used against him in high-leverage games. It’s a strategy that centers detest.
“Couldn’t be more annoying than a small guarding you,” backup big man Jonas Valanciunas vouched.
For that reason, Nuggets coach David Adelman came to Jokic’s defense Wednesday when asked whether he’s guilty of focusing too much on the whistle and not enough on playing through it.
“I’m gonna keep saying this. … It’s not me being biased to my own player. Nobody’s being guarded like him in the league,” Adelman said. “Nobody. Nobody’s going at the knees of other MVPs. Nobody’s taking shots like he’s taking. But that’s our reality. So we have to continue to just to try to win games. He has to play through that physicality. I have to find places on the court where he can play in space. That’s on me. So there’s no excuses, because if the whistle, if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. The game continues. So we’ll deal with it as long as we can. At the same time, I have no problem with him reacting. Reacting is part of being a human being.”
Jazz coach Will Hardy threw Elijah Harkless, Keyonte George and other guards at Jokic on Monday, fronting him and denying him the catch. On a few possessions, those smaller defenders also backed up under Jokic, reached backward with their arms and hooked them around his legs. Jokic either fell or flopped — depending on who tells it — over the top of George four minutes into the game when the burgeoning Utah star tried the maneuver. Neither Jokic nor George received a foul.
“I think you send clips to the office, to the NBA office, and show them where there’s fouls, and hopefully the refs call it,” Bruce Brown said.
Jokic and the Nuggets have long held the belief that smaller players are allowed to get away with more contact when defending bigs in the post, in contrast to how driving guards are officiated. They’ve also seen the cross-match enough over the years to be ready for it. OG Anunoby has done it effectively for Toronto and New York. The Lakers fronted him last season, using Rui Hachimura as a primary matchup but swarming him whenever he managed to get a touch.
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Jokic ended up attempting 11 of his team’s 35 free throws in Monday’s nail-biter at Utah. He didn’t speak to reporters in the lead-up to Thursday’s game against the Lakers. In the meantime, Adelman was his fiercest defender.
“I think out of fairness to him, any human being at some point — when they get hit in the knees and guys take shots at them throughout (the game), and they test you as a man when you’re out there — you’re gonna react, man,” the first-year Nuggets coach said. “If that affects his game, I don’t see it. I thought the fact that three people guarded him made it really hard to get him the ball. We went through some of that today. But yeah, it’s a balancing act of all those things. … As a team, we have to watch how we react to how he’s being guarded. Because I do think it emotionally affects the other guys as well, if they feel like they need to stand up for somebody they really care about (who’s) their teammate. At the same time, you have to focus on winning.”
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