Nuggets social media able to predict future before shocking career-high performance

There weren’t a lot of positive takeaways from the Nuggets’ 129-121 loss to the Bulls on Monday night. The defensive effort was lackluster at best and they were badly outshot by Chicago.

This was a game that the Nuggets should have been able to win and fairly easily. The Bulls are not a great team and they’ve been struggling lately. They recently telegraphed their intentions to sell ahead of the deadline as well, but none of that stopped them from handily defeating Denver on Monday.

One of the lone bright spots on the night was the offensive excellence of Nikola Jokic, like usual. It was Serbian Heritage Night in Chicago, a city that has one of the largest Serbian populations in the country. Jokic put on a show for his home countrymen, putting up 33 points, 14 rebounds, and 12 assists.

Nuggets’ official Twitter account predicts big dunking night for Jokic

Jokic definitely seemed like he had a little extra juice as there was clearly a little extra in the building. He wasn’t able to play in Chicago last year for Serbian Heritage Night so he may have had this one circled on his calendar to give the fans a treat.

Before the game, the Nuggets tweeted out a video of Jokic dunking during warm-ups with the caption, “Be aware: Joker’s hops are warmed up” along with an emoji of a yellow danger sign. It was a funny and lighthearted tweet, about a player who is known for anything but his athleticism - and dunking.

The tweet seemed to be intended as a bit of a joke, poking fun at Jokic’s lack of above-the-rim game. But whether that was the intention or not, it ended up being a foreshadowing of what was to come.

Jokic sets new career-high for dunks in one game

Despite being over 7 feet tall, Jokic has certainly never been a prolific dunker. He had just 14 dunks on the season heading into Monday night’s game and he has never averaged more than 0.65 dunks a game over the course of any season - even that was a career high by a wide margin.

Usually slam dunks are reserved for emergencies or rare wide-open occasions, but Monday night was different. It was a bit surprising to see Jokic living above the rim frequently. He came out aggressively attacking the rim, banging home three dunks in the first half. 

He kept it going in the second half with two more and finished the game with a new career-high 5 dunks. He was going to the hoop with purpose and conviction and seemed extra motivated to finish hard with thunder instead of finesse.

It’s a small victory and doesn’t take away from the pathetic loss in Chicago. But it was cool to see the Nuggets’ Twitter account predicting the future and then to see Jokic come out and set a new personal best in an extremely unlikely category. What can he possibly do next?