Hey, remember him? Big guy? Serbian accent? Breakdances at birthday parties? Sings baritone?
“He’s a joke,” Nuggets star Jamal Murray laughed when asked about center Nikola Jokic on Tuesday following Denver’s 80–78, series-clinching win over the Utah Jazz. “He does everything.”
More importantly, he does it when it counts. According to ESPN Stats and Info, the Joker is one of only four NBA players this century to put up at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in every postseason Game 7 in which he’s appeared.
The other three: Dirk Nowitzki, Tim Duncan and LeBron James.
Pretty hefty cover charge to get into that club, my friend.
“We do not get a Game 7 without Jamal,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said after his bunch punched their tickets to the Western Conference semis for a second straight year. “But quietly, Nikola Jokic has been sensational as well … that’s what we want and need from our best player.”
Tuesday, they needed every quiet wiggle. Every pivot. Every spin. Every goofy dance move.
On an evening in which the Nuggets looked tighter than a pair of Quin Snyder’s jeans, Jokic produced one of the bigger double-doubles of his career: 30 points and 14 boards on 23 shots. And no shot was bigger than the one with 27.8 seconds left on the clock, game tied at 78-all.
With Jazz center Rudy Gobert extended in front of him, the Serbian drove, backed his defender down and spun 360 degrees twice, a 280-pound ballerina on tippy toes of glory.
He then faded back while lofting a rainbow with his right hand over all 93 inches of Gobert’s wingspan. A baby hook with enough body English to fill a thesaurus.
Ballgame.
Well, eventually.
“Joker put us on his back,” said Murray, who finished with a merely-human 17 points and four assists. “And was big down the stretch.”
The Nuggs managed only 30 points in the second half. Joker accounted for 17 of them. Dude shot 66.7% from the floor during the fourth quarter of a series in which three of Denver’s four victories came by 10 points or fewer.
“We didn’t quit,” Jokic told ABC’s Cassidy Hubbarth just before he left the court. “We were down 3–1. I don’t know how many teams down 3–1 that came back. I said (it) before, this is going to be an interesting series.”
Yeah, but did it have to be that interesting?
It’s OK to praise the comeback, while also acknowledging that it should probably have never gotten to this point in the first place. The Nuggets were deeper, bigger, and had a 3–0 edge against Utah, head-to-head, during the regular season.
The playoffs are as much about mental toughness as physical gifts, and Denver looked lost between the ears until about two-thirds of the way through Game 5, when the grave reality appeared to finally set in.
“We kind of had the open looks,” Jokic said. “We (were) just a little bit, kind of … tight.”
Ya don’t say.
Everybody on the floor looked edgy Tuesday, given the stakes. And leggy. The form on Murray’s jumper is impeccable when he’s right. After a late second-quarter collision with Joe Ingles, the lift-off, the elevation, didn’t quite look the same coming out of the half.
Yet for all the love surrounding the Blue Arrow’s national coming-out party during this series, we should’ve known that Big Honey would somehow twist his way into the last word.
“We definitely needed him,” Murray said. “He made clutch baskets and just kept us poised. He was our leader for the second half. And he did it all. He’s going to be in the Hall of Fame one day.”
Only two guys have ever scored 30 for the Nuggets in a Game 7. The Joker joins David Thompson’s 37, dropped on the Milwaukee Bucks back in 1978.
Another pretty good club, that one. And if you’re still a Jokic denier after this one, pal, the joke’s on you.