Jason Kidd drops candid message about Denver Nuggets after blowout
By Sam LaFrance
The Denver Nuggets brought their record to 18-10 in the new season, after downing the Dallas Mavericks 130-104 on Monday night. Following his team's loss, Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd got candid about the Nuggets.
"No, they're actually very good in transition," Kidd told reporters of Denver's heap of transition points Monday. "When you talk about Joker (Nikola Jokic) and the homerun pass they get out -- miss or make -- they'll get out and throw the ball ahead and take advantage. I think in the first quarter they had 16 transition points. So our halfcourt (defense) was fine giving up 28 in the first, but 16 of them were in transition. That puts you in a bad situation, especially when they play in the halfcourt and play through Joker and you expect them to score. So when you give up points like that in transition that just makes it a little bit tougher and tonight it was tough for us."
Denver finished the night with 32 fast break points, posting 19 more than their opposition.
Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic only needed to score eight points to beat Dallas Mavericks
The most odd part of Denver's blowout win over Dallas was that two-time MVP Nikola Jokic only scored eight points. Believe it or not, it was the third time this season that he hasn't needed to crack double digits. In both the Dec. 12 and Nov. 20 wins over the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons, respectively, Jokic finished with less than ten points.
Kidd was asked what his team did to slow down the Serbian superstar, after the loss. He didn't attribute the lack of scoring to anything his team did, rather pointing out that Jokic didn't have to play very many minutes.
"Well the score was out of hand, so he didn't have to do much. He didn't have to play that much."
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