Nikola Jokic had a rough time on Monday night. The Nuggets introduced a new starting lineup that featured Jonas Valanciunas as Jokic’s frontcourt partner. Denver’s opponent, the Utah Jazz, stuck their big man Kyle Filipowski on Valanciunas, leaving Jokic to be guarded by second-year man Elijah Harkless. Elijah Harkless is on a two-way contract for a team that tries very hard to lose basketball games. At a generous 6-foot-3, Harkless will be light fare for Jokic. Instead, Jokic spent most of his 36 minutes of floor time suffering what appeared to be a nervous breakdown.
We cannot simply pass by Valanciunas. Nuggets coach David Adelman is drowning. Injuries have turned his rotation into hell. All four of his top forwards were out on Monday and his bench was a disaster. They were nuked again by the Minnesota Timberwolves’ reserves on Sunday, and Adelman decided to mix the corrupt hand he was dealt. “I need to find a unit that can actually do it and compete at a higher level,” he said after Sunday’s loss, in which Denver’s bench lineup turned a nine-point lead into a seven-point deficit in one disastrous second-quarter performance. “To me, that was the game. We let it change with offensive struggles, missed shots and terrible defense. I told them after the game that was inexcusable.” Valanciunas was a big part of the problem on Sunday, posting a defensive rating of 152 and a minus-15 rating in less than 10 minutes.
After 30 hours, it was very amusing to me that Adelman’s solution was not to send Valanciunas to Kamchatka in a big box, but to remove him from the bench unit by pushing him into the starting lineup. That the Nuggets, one of four teams in the West with 38 wins and just three games ahead of the dreaded play-in, would attempt such a thing in a by-God regular season contest speaks to Utah’s adeptness at the art of tanking.
Monday’s experiment was always going to put pressure on Jokic’s style. With Valanciunas pinned around the restricted area and essentially unable to move quickly or far along any dimensional axis, Jokic’s preferred office space around his elbows has become a prison of sorts. And in a lineup with Valanciunas and Christian Braun, another poor shooter, Jokic will see help coming from all directions without the benefit of spacing. So it was especially rude and unhelpful that Harkless, who was trying frantically to get a foothold in the NBA, constantly fought Jokic for every inch of space, frantically outpaced him, tangled with him even during shabby screen sets, and generally bludgeoned him to within an inch of his life. And it wasn’t just Harkless. Utah’s other little guys, even more puny than Harkless, were constantly throwing their butts at Jokic and tying their limbs to his body. Keyonte George, who is about the height and weight of a mature white heron, has managed to completely neutralize Jokic by boxing out or head-on on more than one occasion.
Bennett Durando denver post Described it as “the ‘Frustrating Jokic’ playbook,” and boy, it worked. Jokic had 16 points on 11 shots and did a decent amount of rebounding and playmaking for any other center, but he seemed suicidal, the Nuggets barely got playing time, and I wouldn’t have been upset if I woke up today to hear that he retired for the night and is back on his word. From a neutral standpoint, I thought Yuta’s determination, while admirable, was pretty miserable to watch, and I despised it even more because I was certain that Yuta would immediately pull the plug if they seemed too threatened by their greatest enemy, Victory.
Jokic is often in a worse mood than usual these days. For example, you can hinder him not only by painful and disqualifying flagrant fouls, but also by annoying defensive tenacity, boxing out, and blowing or not blowing the whistle. Monday’s game contained everything he hates most about basketball right now. Opponents, referees, teammates, gravity, the passage of time.
After returning from a month-long absence due to a knee injury, it’s safe to say that Jokic was a bit annoyed and more interested in trying to convince the referees that he had been fouled than actually winning the basketball game. As last night’s game entered its decisive period and the Jazz appeared to walk away with an unthinkable victory, Jokic was busy throwing himself over Kyle Filipofsky to demonstrate “how unfair it is for a defender to touch him.” Breakout editor-in-chief Tom Ley, who has spent time developing and reinforcing ongoing meltdowns over the past 27 televised Nuggets games, accurately described one particular knot in Denver’s recent offense, saying that Jokic “stands at the free throw line and does the Elaine Benes dance because he’s upset that someone else is near him.” Harkless did a lot more than just be around Jokic. He gave Utah absolutely 26 minutes of defensive time, drew a foul, and almost forced them to win the basketball game.
These are rotten times when Denver’s best player is getting annoyed. The conference around them has shaky losers in the middle and tanking in the bottom third of the league, and even with a messed up roster, the Nuggets can aim higher in the standings. Instead, they went 6-7 in February despite a pretty tough schedule, and fell from second to fifth in the West on Jan. 31. Jokic wasn’t terrible production-wise, but he was ill-tempered, grumpy, grumpy, and more prone to hunting down vulgar whistles than ever and then taking their rejections as unforgivable personal insults. While he engages in theatrical refereeing stunts, Denver’s offense is an agonizing mess of contested handoffs and Norman Dale-like performance weaving, buoyed by transition heroics and Murray’s high-wire shot-making to a truly shocking degree. It’s annoying and doesn’t work. A few healthy forwards could help, but I don’t want to pin my hopes for a late surge on Cam Johnson’s return.
The good news is that the Nuggets really can’t fall that far away. Johnson and Spencer Jones should rejoin the rotation this week, Peyton Watson isn’t far behind, and it won’t be long before Aaron Gordon emerges from his strange warehouse home. Adelman’s rotation will inevitably become less crazy. The pacing naturally eases, the timing improves, and Valanciunas is tricked into being locked in a locked closet. The Nuggets are hoping this will boost Jokic’s morale so he can play good basketball again. He can get by in the box score while giving up the prize of the “frustrating Jokic” playbook, but the Nuggets can’t succeed like this. And it’s hell to watch anyway.
