Nuggets Player Grades: Weight of Loss to Lakers Falls on Jokic

Juancho Hernangomez: D+

To be fair to him, Juancho Hernangomez did have some good moments last night. He caught a very impressive lob from Nikola Jokic and had a quality steal, in addition to a good putback. Unfortunately, he had quite a few defensive lapses and missed both of his shots from the perimeter, in addition to a missed wide open layup. Juancho was also a team worst -9 in 12 minutes. He simply was not effective in the bench unit last night.

Malik Beasley: D

Malik was extremely unproductive in his minutes. He has shot well in his limited time this season, but last night was not a good one for him. He hit three of his eleven shots, missing all three of his three pointers. He did not record any rebounds or assists and was abysmal on the defensive end.

Will Barton: F

Will Barton has been one of the most consistent Nuggets this season, but again, it was an off night for him. He took several open looks from the perimeter but only one of his eight fell. Overall he shot two for eleven from the field. Despite being tied for team high in plus/minus at -2, he had the opportunity to make this a much more competitive game.

Nikola Jokic: F

This pains me to do. The franchise player shouldn’t be playing like this right? He said after the game that even if he can’t score, he usually figures out other ways to affect the game. Unfortunately, not only were his shots not falling, but he was bullied on the boards. With his size, this shouldn’t happen, but he struggled on the glass.

His passing was stellar as usual, but it didn’t make up for the other defects in his game last night. On defense, he’s usually solid in terms of positioning, but there were several times where he just wasn’t able to move laterally quick enough on back cuts to the rim. He’s going to need to step up this season, and preferably soon.