Last Saturday, the Lakers turned the NBA world upside down for a few hours as they came into Denver and smoked the Nuggets. Denver had owned that matchup for years but LA flipped the script in their first game with Luka Doncic.
But it wasn’t so much thanks to the brilliance of Doncic as it was to the defensive gameplan of JJ Redick and the execution of his players. It all revolved around Nikola Jokic and a commitment to take away his space.
The Lakers swarmed Jokic from the jump, denying him the ball - sometimes full court - and getting right into his airspace, being extremely physical and pushing him off his spots. Jokic had a very difficult time establishing position and was barely able to touch the ball.
When he did, he was swarmed by hands and multiple bodies. He couldn’t get clean looks at the basket and was suffocated by an intense defense. It was eye-opening to watch how helpless the Nuggets offense was as the Lakers essentially beat up on Jokic and dared the rest of the team to beat them.
It was a resounding statement of a victory and one that other teams surely watched closely and will try to replicate. The Pistons seemed intent on deploying a similar gameplan on Friday night, but this time, Michael Malone did his best to make sure it wouldn’t happen.
Malone gets technical foul 49 seconds into game
The Pistons started off the game getting bodies into Jokic, pushing him around, and being rewarded for it. But Malone flipped out and lost his mind on the officials, earning a technical foul not even a minute into the game. Afterward, Malone explained his rationale for the anger to Bennett Durando of the Denver Post.
“[It was to] let those 3 officials know that I’m not gonna allow that to happen tonight, where they’re just gonna grab, hold, impede Nikola Jokic. That is not the gameplan moving forward. … There is a thing called freedom of movement in this league.”
While he may not have said it outright, he might as well have, this was in response to the way the Lakers played. Malone is smartly fighting back on the court, and in the media, and making sure everybody knows how much his MVP was getting defended illegally.
The strategy seemed to work as the Nuggets went on to get a huge win on the second night of a road back-to-back in Detroit, 134-119 over a red-hot Pistons team. Jokic finished the game with 23 points, 17 rebounds, 15 assists, and 12 free throw attempts. The refs seemed to get the message that Malone was trying to send.
And if there was any confusion about what was going on, Pistons coach JB Bickerstaff made it very clear with his own interpretation of the way the game was officiated. “I’m going to give Mike Malone credit. When we were playing physical early, he went out and got a tech and we weren’t allowed to play physical anymore."
This will be a fascinating dynamic to watch as the season goes on and one that may define how games are won and lost come playoff time.