Either the Nuggets real­ly ben­e­fit­ted from the All-Star break, or they real­ly ben­e­fit­ted from play­ing the Wash­ing­ton Wiz­ards in their first game after the All-Star break.

In a per­fect rem­e­dy for a three-game los­ing streak before the week off, the Nuggets returned with a resound­ing 130–110 win over the floun­der­ing Wiz­ards on Thurs­day night at Ball Arena.

With 21 points, 19 rebounds and 15 assists that includ­ed some of his best dimes of the sea­son, Niko­la Jokic has now reg­is­tered a triple-dou­ble against every NBA team exclud­ing his own. He has mul­ti­ple in his career against every team except the Knicks, Pac­ers and Wiz­ards (9–46). Only LeBron James and Rus­sell West­brook have triple-dou­bles against all 30 teams.

“I hope (Jokic) nev­er gets that,” coach Michael Mal­one said.

Jokic almost put a bow on this triple-dou­ble by half­time, but Aaron Gor­don passed out from under the bas­ket instead of attempt­ing a layup that would have been a Jokic assist late in the sec­ond quar­ter. Jokic went to the lock­er room with 10 points, 14 boards and nine assists.

This was the third game of Jokic’s career, and the sec­ond this sea­son, in which he shot 100% from the field on at least 10 attempts. It was also his fourth career “per­fect triple-dou­ble” on 100% shooting.

“Like I always say, it’s just some­thing (that) after I fin­ish career — lega­cy, mile­stone,” said Jokic, who knew going into the game that Wash­ing­ton was the final box to check. “I’m gonna look back and say that’s a real­ly cool thing to do.”

The only bad news of the night for the two-time MVP: He had to play a hand­ful of min­utes in the fourth quar­ter with a back-to-back await­ing the Nuggets on Fri­day in Port­land. Mal­one felt the game was still in reach after a Wiz­ards run.

Jokic seemed to be hav­ing as much fun exper­i­ment­ing with cir­cus tricks as he did in the uncom­pet­i­tive All-Star Game on Sun­day. In the first quar­ter, he tapped a rebound from his left hand to his right, then used the right to flick the ball 70-ish feet to Gor­don for a dunk. From the rebound to the heave, he nev­er low­ered his arm. Three min­utes lat­er, he assist­ed anoth­er Gor­don slam with a behind-the-back pass from the left wing.

“Like any great pass­er, his head is always up,” Mal­one said. “He’s sur­vey­ing the floor. He’s see­ing who is open, where the defense is, and he just has a tremen­dous IQ. He sees a lot of things before they happen.”

Washington’s malaise cer­tain­ly helped. The Nuggets (37–19) scored five layups and three dunks in the first nine min­utes, untrou­bled by defend­ers in the lane. And the missed shots at the oth­er end made rebound­ing easy for Jokic.

In one sec­ond-quar­ter sequence, inter­im coach Bri­an Keefe called a time­out with 6:51 left after an easy Michael Porter Jr. put-back layup. Sev­en sec­onds into the Wiz­ards’ ensu­ing pos­ses­sion, Corey Kispert turned it over. Jokic snatched the ball from an offi­cial and chucked the inbound pass the length of the court to Gor­don again. Not a sin­gle Wash­ing­ton play­er was back. Anoth­er easy dunk. Anoth­er Keefe time­out — with 6:42 remain­ing in the half.

Porter also had a tri­umphant return from the break, with 22 points (includ­ing 18 in the first half) and 11 rebounds (includ­ing five offen­sive). Every starter amassed 16 or more points except for the score­less Ken­tavi­ous Cald­well-Pope, who was removed at the start of the sec­ond half with a right fin­ger sprain. He jammed a fin­ger while earn­ing a steal ear­ly in the first quarter.

And on a night when the Wiz­ards brought Jor­dan Poole off the bench for the first time all sea­son, Denver’s sec­ond unit was the bet­ter one. Chris­t­ian Braun played with a hop in his step, attack­ing the rim through con­tact and earn­ing his first career dou­ble-dou­ble (12 points, 10 boards). Pey­ton Wat­son and Zeke Nna­ji both blocked four shots, with Watson’s includ­ing a pair of awe-inspir­ing chase-down swats on Washington’s fast breaks.

“We blocked shots, and we ran off of that,” Mal­one said. “So yes, every­body likes some­body block­ing a shot into the third row and hit­ting the pop­corn lady in the (butt), but I would rather keep it inbounds and get out and run. And we had real­ly good exam­ples of that tonight.”

Mal­one lament­ed pregame that it was unfair to Nna­ji to go into the long break after a sol­id per­for­mance in Denver’s last game against Sacra­men­to, ren­der­ing it impos­si­ble for the back­up big to build on it. Based on that mer­it, Nna­ji played Thurs­day instead of DeAn­dre Jor­dan and took advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ty with hus­tle plays.

“He was on the glass,” Jokic said. “You felt his ener­gy and his pres­ence while he was playing,”

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