Keeler: Hey, Nikola Jokic haters? After Game 7, the joke’s on you.

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.

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