DETROIT — Instead of grad­u­al­ly amass­ing five fouls to keep him­self most­ly side­lined, Niko­la Jokic expe­dit­ed the process this time.

In the sec­ond game of a Rust Belt back-to-back in which frus­tra­tion with offi­ci­at­ing stewed and sim­mered until it boiled over, Jokic fol­lowed Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one down the tun­nel almost exact­ly one quar­ter after Mal­one was eject­ed for argu­ing calls ear­ly in a 107–103 Den­ver win over the Pistons.

The Nuggets (10–4) escaped a hec­tic fin­ish with air­tight inte­ri­or defense, snap­ping a four-game road los­ing streak and extend­ing Detroit’s skid to 12 games. Reg­gie Jack­son led the charge sans Jokic with 21 points, six assists and no turnovers in an oth­er­wise chaot­ic, calami­tous game.

“Char­ac­ter win,” Mal­one said. “That’s what I’d say. Char­ac­ter win.”

Jack­son con­vert­ed a base­line floater with a foul to tie the Pis­tons at 97, gave the Nuggets a 103–101 lead with a dri­ving layup, then lobbed an assist for Aaron Gor­don that turned into the go-ahead and-one with 1:33 left. Den­ver nev­er relin­quished that lead. The one time Jack­son fal­tered, get­ting crossed up by Cade Cun­ning­ham in the last 20 sec­onds with a three-point lead, Ken­tavi­ous Cald­well-Pope rotat­ed in help defense to force a missed layup. Cald­well-Pope also scored 20.

“Goes up and uses the rule of ver­ti­cal­i­ty, defend­ing with­out foul­ing,” Mal­one said. “… That was a huge play. And that’s what makes KCP such a great defender.”

Jokic’s ejec­tion was prompt­ed by his sec­ond tech­ni­cal foul of the night with 1:21 before half­time. It came one day after he played a sea­son-low 27 min­utes due to foul trou­ble in Cleveland.

He was ooz­ing atti­tude from the open­ing tip Mon­day, pick­ing up his first tech­ni­cal with­in five min­utes for argu­ing a lane vio­la­tion call. When Jokic and Mar­vin Bagley III got tan­gled off-ball dur­ing a Nuggets pos­ses­sion moments lat­er, Jokic appeared to sar­cas­ti­cal­ly applaud the offi­cials for call­ing the foul on Bagley instead of him.

By the end of the half, Jokic was aggra­vat­ed enough to stop drib­bling dur­ing a live-ball sit­u­a­tion while he was attempt­ing to back down Bagley. He let the ball bounce, dor­mant, while giv­ing the near­est offi­cial his sig­na­ture baf­fled-arms gesture.

No call. Live ball.

Jokic re-gath­ered pos­ses­sion then flailed as Isa­iah Stew­art rotat­ed to dou­ble-team him and help Bagley knock the ball away. That, too, result­ed in no foul call. The ball slow­ly rolled out of bounds for a Nuggets side-out. But rather than move on, Jokic kept get­ting in the face of ref­er­ee Tre Mad­dox, while stand-in head coach David Adel­man tried to get between them. Mad­dox hand­ed Jokic anoth­er tech­ni­cal, and Jokic made his exit from a game that was soon 56–55 Nuggets at halftime.

“He doesn’t need to apol­o­gize. They’re foul­ing him, and they’re not reff­ing him by the book,” Gor­don said. “They’re putting two hands on him. They’re push­ing him. It’s a foul. When some­body has their back to the bas­ket, you can’t put two hands on him, and they keep putting two hands on him. So it’s a foul. I can under­stand his frustration.”

Jack­son, the ex-Pis­ton, scored the buzzer-beat­ing layup to give Den­ver that slim lead. He had been greet­ed with mild boos pregame when he was intro­duced, but Jokic received most­ly applause from Detroit’s fans dur­ing start­ing line­up intros. As the two-time MVP exit­ed the game, the Pis­tons local broad­cast expressed dis­plea­sure with the offi­ci­at­ing crew: “Let me tell you this, these fans did not come here to see Cur­tis Blair, Tre Mad­dox or Andy Nagy, who­ev­er they are.”

Jack­son also scored 18 points against his most recent team, the Clip­pers, six days ear­li­er. Is there some­thing about play­ing his for­mer teams?

“Yeah­hh,” he said. “I love my for­mer teams, always. I’m always appre­cia­tive of my time there. But got­ta try to show up when you play your old teams.”

Niko­la Jokic picked up his sec­ond tech­ni­cal foul and was eject­ed right before half­time of Nuggets-Pistons 

Nuggets head coach Michael Mal­one was eject­ed after pick­ing up two techs ear­li­er in the half.pic.twitter.com/gZ4gH2K3JL

— Clutch­Points (@ClutchPoints) Novem­ber 21, 2023

The rea­son Adel­man was the man try­ing to inter­vene with Jokic? Blair, the crew chief, tossed Mal­one with 1:22 left in the first quar­ter. Malone’s tip­ping point was a foul call on Nuggets rook­ie Julian Strawther, who was the first play­er to dive on top of a loose ball at Denver’s defen­sive end of the floor. An oppos­ing play­er tripped over Strawther try­ing to go after the ball, but Strawther was whis­tled. Mal­one turned to the sec­ond row of the bench to watch the replay as play con­tin­ued, then he con­tin­ued yelling at the officials.

Unlike Jokic, Mal­one received both tech­ni­cals with­in two sec­onds of each other.

“We teach our guys, be first to the floor,” Mal­one said. “First to the floor. Win the 50–50 bat­tle. And in that play right there, I felt Julian was first to the floor. Doing exact­ly what we are ask­ing him to do. So I give Julian cred­it for try­ing to fight for that loose ball. But the offi­ci­at­ing is the offi­ci­at­ing, and we move on and get ready to go to Orlando.”