Nikola Jokic had another one of those what the hell is happening right now performances Wednesday night, against the unbelievably depressing Los Angeles Clippers, posting 55 points on 23 shots, plus 12 rebounds and six assists. Because there is never just one way to gawk at Jokic's heroics, it is notable that this was only the fifth time in 11 games so far this season that Jokic has not posted a triple-double. The Clippers game-planned to limit his playmaking opportunities, opting for one-on-one defense with huge lummoxes Ivica Zubac and Brook Lopez, and largely staying home on shooters. Jokic accepted the invitation and immediately mashed his counterparts to a slimy goo. He scored 25 points on 11 shots in the first quarter, and then scored 19 on perfect shooting in the third quarter, to push the Nuggets out to a commanding lead. It was only because the Clippers pretended to maintain any late competitive fire that Jokic was forced to participate for any portion of the fourth quarter, tipping home a rebound and burying a free throw before retiring for the final four minutes.
When it was Zubac, Jokic pushed him around down in the paint; when it was Lopez, Jokic bombed from the perimeter. Against both men he forced contact, dragged them into swirling actions at the elbow, and even outraced them in the open floor. It's all stuff you've seen Jokic do one million times, but it's still very fun sometimes to watch Jokic skip the elaborate table-setting and get straight down to the meal. Defend me straight up, will you? We'll just see about that! The demoralization of Zubac started very early, with some bruising backdowns and a couple of those arcing, fluttering shotput hooks, and then a big smooth dunk in transition. The Clippers still weren't double-teaming in the third, but all eyes were certainly on Jokic, and he was finally able to pass his teammates into some wide-open looks. It was a somewhat inverted masterpiece of a performance; Jokic was so dominant that his coach David Adelman had to sort of sheepishly swear that he meant no harm by simply inserting his best player into the game during the game's closing stages.
Jokic has been on an insane run this month. The Nuggets have won six straight and now have the NBA's second-best point differential and net rating, in both cases behind only the loaded, preposterously deep, and invincible-seeming Oklahoma City Thunder, the league's defending champions. Over the winning streak, Jokic is averaging 36 points, 12 rebounds, and 11 assists, on ludicrous 74 percent shooting; according to the Associated Press, he is the first player in history to average a 35-point triple-double while shooting 60 percent or better over a stretch of at least six games. Given the way he is playing, that run seems like it could stretch off well into the future, and possibly to infinity. "I just keep shooting it," said Jokic of his recent scoring burst, and of the opportunities coming his way in Adelman's offense.
Given the championship expectations for this team, it is sometimes hard to get your heart racing about anything good that happens for them before, like, May. Jokic's production from afar can seem metronomic, to such a degree that a 33–15–16 triple-double, like the one he posted last week against the Miami Heat, starts to look like normal Jokic shit. That leaves all sorts of time for Nuggets fans to think about other insignificant things, like the the underperformance of handsomely paid swingman Cameron Johnson, who was acquired over the summer from the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for smooth-brained podcaster weirdo Michael Porter Jr. A lowlight reel is already in circulation, 11 games into Johnson's Nuggets tenure. The editor-in-chief of this very website, brain-poisoned by Jokic's singular brilliance, appeared in our work Slack recently to ponder seemingly at random whether the Nuggets might have a shot at trading for fourth-year Sacramento Kings guard Keon Ellis, who has averaged 6.6 points per game in his career. Meanwhile, the most-used lineup in the entire NBA is Denver's starting five, and they are pounding opponents by 12 points per 100 possessions.
I think your brain just sort of has to go this way when your best player is as special as Jokic, but regular-season wins have started to feel insignificant, and increasingly your team appears to be trapped between the insurmountable obstacle of Oklahoma City on one side and the unstoppable kaiju that is Victor Wembanyama rising over the horizon on the other. Two weeks of 35-point triple-doubles for your guy can feel both like an amazing shooting star flying unnoticed over your neighborhood, and also sort of normalized and weirdly humdrumified. A normal cold streak in the first month of a season for a good player can feel like a debilitating vulnerability; it feels easier to worry today about the best lineup in the league than to believe that its entirely minor and meaningless trouble will sort itself out over the next six months. The days of Jokic are precious, fleeting, and must not be wasted!
All of which is to say, with lots of existential fretting and for approximately the one zillionth consecutive season, that Nikola Jokic is real good, and that it is amazing that he continues to get better. While you are scoffing and reserving judgment, or while you are neurotically freaking out about whether Cameron Johnson will make 40 percent of his three-pointers in a series six months from now, the big galoot is out there doing genuinely historic shit, and the Nuggets appear to be no worse than the NBA's second-best team. Don't miss it.
