Denver Nuggets: Nikola Jokic needs to play to his strengths

Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic needs to remember who he is as a player and take advantage of his exceptional passing ability.

It’s good that Denver Nuggets star center Nikola Jokic has been aggressive offensively but he hasn’t exercised the patience or tried to make the nifty passes that he’s become known for this season. Drawing Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert away from the rim as much as possible is ideal and Joker shooting 55.6% from 3-point range on 4.5 attempts per game helps that.

However, his 21 shot attempts in Game 2 after averaging 14.7 shots per game during the 2019-20 season illuminates how hellbent he was on getting his own shot

Jokic did manage to tally 6 total assists in Game 2, he even got the team’s first points on the board with a dish inside to Paul Millsap while he was on the move. Still, he had the opportunity to have a few more if he would have been less focused on scoring against multiple defenders or tight defense from Gobert..

One such play happened within a couple of minutes after that smart play, as Gobert, Royce O’Neale and Juwan Morgan all had eyes on Jokic and initially swarming him inside. Instead of kicking the ball out to an open Millsap — who’s shooting the ball exceptionally well from 3-point range this season — he took a one-footed fadeaway that the lanky Gobert could have blocked. A minute later, with the same three players (and Joe Ingles) coming at him in the paint, he passed up an assist to Millsap in the corner to take a long floater.

Another such play happened in the fourth quarter, as Gobert, O’Neale and Donovan Mitchell swarmed him but instead of kicking a pass outside, he took the shot.

He made these shots but out of his 11 misses in Game 2, you can be sure that he passed up getting easier for his teammates at least a few more times.

His teammates could have cut to the rim to improve the chances of a Nuggets player getting a clean look but his tunnel vision is one reason why he shot 50.0% from the field for the 30th time this season. Denver is 18-12 in these games but 9 of those games were against non-playoff teams.

While poor team defense was undeniably the reason that the Nuggets had such an embarrassing loss in Game 2, Jokic didn’t look like the best center in the game. He made a number of tough and crafty shots but he didn’t display his court vision as often as he could, his body language was poor and towards the end of the game he started to look as if he was losing confidence.

Against a team that was moving the ball as well as the Jazz did in Game 2, Jokic isn’t going to be an All-World defender and he’s not exactly what you would call a shot-blocker with a career average of 0.7 blocks per game. However, he can and should play to his strengths offensively to ensure that Denver improves their chance of defeating Utah.

It’s not all on Joker though, as Nuggets head coach Michael Malone will need to implore that his teammate move more off-ball to help Jokic make those plays.