Maybe it was the knee injury, maybe it was the wrist injury, or maybe it was something else, but Nikola Jokic’s three-point shooting fell off a cliff after his month off, and it killed the Nuggets. For his career, the Joker shoots over 36% on threes, and he shot over 38% this season on the second-highest volume of his career. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Two offseasons ago, Jokic made three-point shooting a point of emphasis after being pushed out of the paint by the Timberwolves in the playoffs. He came back last season and shot a career-high 41.7% on 4.7 attempts per game- elite numbers- and it allowed him to put up arguably the best offensive season in NBA history.
The Nuggets fell short of a title, but it’s impressive how they took the Thunder to seven games despite limited depth and injuries to multiple key players. This season, things were trending in a similar direction with Jokic’s shooting and the Nuggets holding up even with injuries all over the roster, but then Jokic missed almost all of January with a knee injury, and things were never the same.
Jokic's three-point shooting fell off a cliff after injury
In November and December, Jokic played in 27 games and made 62 of 133 attempts from three, good for a ridiculous 46.6%. He missed a month for a knee injury, then shot 40-138 over February, March, and April, for just 28.9% over the season’s final three months.
Then, things got even more dire once the playoffs started, against a familiar foe: Rudy Gobert and the T-Wolves, the team that originally forced Joker to adapt. And in the six-game first-round loss to Minnesota, Jokic hoisted up 36 attempts and made just 7; that’s 19.4% from distance on six attempts per game. Completely demoralizing.
Jokic needs his 3-pointer against elite playoff defenses
Now, deep in the playoffs, we are seeing the importance of this floor-spacing even more. The Knicks are dominating behind Karl-Anthony Towns, constantly pulling Victor Wembanyama out to the perimeter, opening up everything else for his teammates. The less Jokic uses the three-ball as a weapon, the more we are going to see bigs like Wemby and Rudy Gobert dare him to shoot and stick under the basket, taking away the paint completely.
We don’t need Jokic to turn into Steph Curry, but we need him to go back to being the shooter he was before the injury. Hopefully, with a full offseason, his wrist can heal, any other issues will be gone, and he can get back to being an elite shooting big man. But if not, life is going to continue being tough for Denver once the playoffs roll around, as offense gets harder to generate and teams relentlessly target weaknesses.Â
In the Nuggets’ 2023 title run, Jokic shot 3.8 threes a game. That number has gone up each ensuing playoffs, to 4.4 in 2024, 5.1 last season, and 6.0 this year. Given how hard it is to get good looks in the postseason, that’s not going to change any time soon. Jokic needs to make them pay, or we are going to see more ugly losses like this Timberwolves series.
Add us as a preferred source on Google