It has been several days since the Lakers came into Denver and beat down the Nuggets, but it’s still the talk of the NBA world. Much of the attention has been focused, specifically on JJ Redick’s defensive gameplan which successfully managed to contain Nikola Jokic.
The Joker was held to just 12 points on 2/7 shooting from the floor, but it was all about the defensive activity. Redick had the Laker defenders hounding Jokic up and down the court, denying him the ball as much as possible.
They were fronting the post, showing help with every screen and switching whenever possible, packing the paint, and forcing Jokic off his spots. It was truly a masterclass by LA and one of the most impressive combinations of scheme and execution that we’ve ever seen against Jokic.
Lakers double-teamed Jokic more than any game of his career
Perhaps the most interesting and effective element of the Lakers’ strategy was the way they sent extra bodies to Jokic whenever he was able to touch the ball. Many teams have attempted to double-team the Joker, but thanks to his incredible vision and passing, that almost always backfires.
But on Saturday, the Lakers blitzed Jokic and rapidly double and triple-teamed him every time he got the ball. They were sagging so far off of almost every other Nugget and getting in Jokic’s airspace with multiple big, long bodies with active hands and making his life miserable.
On his podcast, The Kevin O’Connor Show, KOC shared a stat that Jokic had 132 touches in the game and was doubled 40 times, good for over 30% of his total touches. To put things in perspective, that is the most that Jokic has ever been double-teamed in one game in his entire career, regular season and playoffs.
More teams will likely try to double Jokic
The extent to which Redick and the Lakers threw extra bodies at Jokic was unlike anything we’ve ever seen, and it worked. Part of that may have just been the element of surprise; it was such a unique strategy to pull out of nowhere in a random February regular season game. Surely, Denver will make some adjustments and be much better suited to counter this scheme the next time they see it.
But there’s no question about it, the Lakers laid out a blueprint for how to beat the Nuggets. It’s still going to be very difficult to execute and very few teams have the personnel, but LA has provided some hope for a task that seemed hopeless; slowing down Jokic.
The Nuggets have had the Lakers’ number for the past few years and ultimately, this is just one regular season game. LA won the battle, but there’s still a long war to be fought. The Nuggets have time to fix this, but they need to get back to the drawing board and figure some things out.