In the theater of all-time performances, the artistic signature of the Joker is irony: The less funny the circ*mstances, the more tricks he pulls out of his bag. For Nikola Jokic, who rules the NBA with a lukewarm shrug, creative plays are merely the consequence of complicated opposing defenses.
After the Minnesota Timberwolves surged out of the gates in the second half of Game 5, the reluctant contortionist drove right to get to the left side of the hoop and jumped, faking a layup attempt before flinging a diagonal behind-the-head pass to Aaron Gordon at the dunker spot on the other side of the basket.
Crisscross, but no applesauce. The length of Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert stifled what would have normally been a dunk. The Timberwolves, reinvigorated defensively, got their first lead of Game 5 after tightening Denver’s windows of opportunity. Jokic, in turn, was re-modulating the supercomputer in his brain to churn out the most devastating, efficient opportunities.
Minnesota entered Game 5 determined to make Jokic a scorer. The defending champ, who collected his third MVP before the game, does not resist that role—and all it comes with—as much as he once did. “I cannot control it,” Jokic said last week, at the press conference after the award was announced. “If they’re going to put me in that conversation, it’s been three, four years now, so I think I’m kind of used to it, so I don’t even pay attention anymore. Probably a good problem to have.” The Nuggets, at the time, were staring down the barrel of an 0-2 deficit after losing the first two games of the series at home. Fans joked that he just wanted to go home to his horses. Pundits leaned in. Was his disposition of perpetual tranquility preventing him from mustering the requisite motivation to defend a title in a league ruled by attrition? Was the laissez-faire affectation giving way to a lack of ambition? To what extent was last year’s title owed to weak competition?
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Jokic has answered those questions and then some, responding with a 40-point, 13-assist, zero-turnover Game 5 that peaked with a 16-point, four-assist tour de force of a third quarter. His performance earned the Nuggets their third straight victory in the series, which they now lead 3-2, and dismantled the best defense of the decade. It was the first time in the postseason when Jokic crossed the 40-point threshold and won, making the Nuggets 1-4 in such circ*mstances.
His 19 first-half points felt like a strategic concession. The next 21 were a gut punch (literally, in some cases). He missed just seven shots all night. Only one of those misses was forced by Gobert, whom Jokic hunted on switches, both because it forced the Defensive Player of the Year away from the rim and also because Jokic just has his number. It’s easy for him to back down Gobert, who, owing to his slender 7-foot-9 wingspan, has the misfortune of a high center of gravity. Jokic’s slippery strength—that uncanny combination of flexibility, force, and touch he uses to bump, slither, twist, and spin through coverages—makes him a nightmare for the now-four-time DPOY.
“He was in the zone,” Gobert said after the game, unable to stifle an exasperated chuckle. (According to clinical psychologists, laughing in response to the stressful and absurd “serves a self-regulation function.”)
On one possession, Jokic posted Gobert up, pivoted toward the basket, then spun in the opposite direction and scored high off the glass. Gobert, running back down the floor, admonished himself with a slap to the forehead.
On another, Jokic cupped the ball in one hand, holding it outside Gobert’s reach, and motioned with the other hand for Reggie Jackson to set a screen. The moment Gobert tilted right in Jackson’s direction, Jokic drove left and threw up a one-legged, right-handed hook that bounced into the basket after the whistle blew.
“He probably belongs to Mensa. He probably doesn’t even know what Mensa is,” quipped Nuggets head coach Michael Malone. “I’ll quiz guys throughout the series about play calls, personal tendencies, and game plan. He just knows everything. Rudy Gobert is a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. Nikola, he plays you, he reads you. He knows how to counter almost everything you can throw at him, from an individual standpoint, from a game-plan standpoint.”
Each bucket hurt more than the last, offering further evidence of the fundamental truth that has turned this series around: Gobert has no shot at guarding Jokic one-on-one. Neither does Kyle Anderson, who got blown by three consecutive times in Game 5. Towns and Naz Reid can (sometimes) match Jokic’s strength and contest his floaters, but they oscillated in and out of foul trouble Tuesday night. Jokic also broke free in transition, setting up Gordon and Jamal Murray for dunks, as well as a Kentavious Caldwell-Pope triple. When the Timberwolves pore over the film in the cold light of day, it’ll likely be these plays they wish they could take back.
After the game, Malone was asked whether anything about Jokic’s latest playoff masterpiece stood out. “Not really,” he shrugged, offering a short, accurate answer. “That was a great game.” In the past two years, the Jokic experience has been watching the same game over and over again against different opponents. In Game 5, we arrived at the familiar place where, for opponents, all hope of stopping him dies. Nothing you do matters. Gobert, Reid, Anderson, and Towns could have been Anthony Davis, Rui Hachimura, and LeBron James or Bam Adebayo, Kevin Love, and Haywood Highsmith. The traditional rim protector can either use his size to guard him or hang back to protect the rim while the burly forward takes the hardest job on earth. Jokic, at some point, will smash all your precious designs.
“A couple shots,” said Gobert, “I think I actually blocked and the ball went in.” Jokic essentially high-fived Gobert on the former’s final shot of the night, a cherry on top of the 3-point line that he hoisted as the shot clock expired. Making Jokic beat you is probably the best option on a menu of poisonous offerings. It can also be the most backbreaking. Just ask AD or any of the other players Jokic, who led the NBA in made shots at the end of the shot clock this season, has exasperated into submission.
The beatdown got so bad that Reggie Miller, calling the game for TNT, wondered whether it was personal between Jokic and Gobert. But with Jokic, it’s always tactical. He doesn’t think about you at all.
“He doesn’t need to be nudged, man,” Malone said. “That’s Nikola Jokic. He’s one of nine,” referencing Jokic’s entry into an exclusive club of three-time MVPs. It includes giants of the game: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, LeBron James, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Moses Malone, and now Jokic, who, it’s worth remembering, the Nuggets selected with the 41st pick in the 2014 draft while a Taco Bell commercial played, after none other than the Minnesota Timberwolves took Glen Robinson III with the 40th pick.
The Nuggets are now one win away from being the sixth team to come back from losing their first two games in a series at home. Only one of those teams, the 1994 Houston Rockets, went on to win a championship. Denver, one win away from eliminating Minnesota, could become one of two, led by a player who is one of one.
“I like to play the game,” Jokic, whose lack of personal salesmanship has become its own kind of charm, said last week. “Everything else, eh.” He is motivated, he told reporters, by the opportunity to compete against the best players in the league in the toughest environments and biggest moments. And, he quipped, the fear of one day being roasted by his kids if he plays poorly. “I’m going to be a cool grandpa.” How do you contextualize that as a measure of greatness? All you can do, in the end, is laugh.
