Another home game, another letdown in front of the Ball Arena fans. The Denver Nuggets are now 1-2 at home, 3-3 on the season, and Nikola Jokic looks human. Someone must have put some Kryptonite in his morning coffee or something. And if he doesn't get back to his form from pre-knee injury last year, the Nuggets could be in trouble.
Jokic was just 10-for-22 from the field in the Nuggets' 118-110 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. Despite hitting a couple of too-little-too-late threes to go 2-for-7 from downtown, his three-ball looked abysmal. Again. He's now shooting just 22.6% from deep, and teams aren't even closing out on him, daring him to shoot.
But what looked even more concerning were the misses in the paint and in the mid-range, and the failure to capitalize on an easy bucket with a smaller defender on him. Jokic had a smaller guard on him twice and passed the ball out to the perimeter for a contested shot instead.
Has he lost his shooting touch? Is there something more with his wrist that we don't know about? The arm sleeve has returned. Is it because there's something up?
Jokic looks "off" to start the year
We've all seen Jokic struggle from beyond the arc since he missed 16 games last January, the longest absence of his career. We could attribute it to a problem he's had with his wrist, and he was often seen with ice on it when he came out for rest last year. But he had no problem in the interior and still finished the season with a typical 63.6% from the two-point range. In fact, Jokic hasn't shot under 60% from two since 2019-20, when he shot 59.4%.
However, 2026-27 doesn't look like that. Jokic is only shooting 57.1% from the two-point range, and his 8-for-15 against the Blazers actually felt worse than that. Jokic is normally automatic in the paint, and at times, he almost looked hesitant to shoot the little runner or floater, his bread-and-butter shots. And he was looking to draw fouls rather than just take the shot.
Jokic was also able to move opposing centers and defenders around in the paint at will before, creating his own space to get his shots off or get closer for an easy bucket at the rim. But so far this year, Jokic hasn't had that same brute force that we're used to. Sure, he's slimmer and moving well on defense, and he's able to help trap on the perimeter and in the corners, but the Nuggets need his force in the paint more.
Jokic's rebounding isn't even the same as it was at the start of the year. Forget being a triple-double machine. Jokic has always been a near-given to get a double-double. But he's averaging just 9.7 boards per game, and he's failed to hit 10 in four of the six games the Nuggets have played.
Sure, Jokic is still putting up great numbers for most. But they aren't Jokic-level numbers. It's early, and of course he's got time to recover. But he's going to need to do it quickly before the Nuggets lose too much ground in the Western Conference standings.
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