There’s no way to sugarcoat it; the first three games of the season have been ugly for the Denver Nuggets. They finally got into the win column on Monday night, but it took a furious late comeback to force overtime before pulling out a 127-125 win over the Toronto Raptors.
A win is a win, and at this point, the Nuggets will take a win however they can get one, but this didn’t exactly ease the concerns around the team. The Raptors are not a very good team, yet the Nuggets struggled mightily to gain any separation.
For a third straight game, the bench was a disaster, they didn’t shoot nearly enough threes, Jamal Murray looked like he had lost a step (despite his clutch heroics, making an impressive reverse layup to force OT), and Russell Westbrook was actively hurting the team during his minutes.
With all the issues plaguing the Nuggets to start this season, leave it to the best player alive to have a fix for everything. Make no mistake, Nikola Jokic is the reason the Nuggets won this game. He’s the reason they’ve been at all competitive through their first three games. And he’s the reason that as bad as the team has looked, they still have a chance this year.
Jokic had an impressive triple-double in the season opener against the Thunder, but the Nuggets scored 87 points and got blown out. He realized what was needed and he immediately adjusted, becoming much more aggressive.
Jokic turning into a scoring machine for the Nuggets
Jokic has never been a player who looks to score first, but that’s exactly what he’s done the last two games - out of necessity. The Nuggets are dying for some shooting and offense so Jokic has taken the burden upon himself and is singlehandedly rescuing the team on that end of the floor.
Two games ago, in the close loss to the Clippers, we saw an unusually aggressive Jokic, as he scored 41 points on 26 shots and hit a career-high 7 threes on 12 attempts. That accounted for half of the Nuggets’ three-pointers and over a third of their total points. It wasn’t quite enough to win, but it kept the game within reach.
But that unusual performance was followed up with an equally aggressive showing as Jokic was determined to keep the Nuggets from falling to 0-3. He scored 40 points yet again, this time on 27 shots, and made 3/5 three-pointers.
This may not be the way Jokic wants to play, but right now it’s the way the Nuggets need him to play. They don’t have time to mess around and figure things out, they need to win games. Jokic knows that and he is going to do whatever it takes to make it happen; even if it means leading the league in scoring this season.