Look at Nikola Jokić’s genius move in Denver’s victory over Detroit.
Serbian basketball player Nikola Jokić returned Denver to the winning track the previous night. On the visit to Detroit, Denver was more than convincing (119:100), and it was the Serbian basketball player who was the best individual of the game with 30 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists, i.e. he was only missing one more pass for a triple-double. What’s more impressive than triple-doubles is the way Jokic is shooting this season, and the Pistons players felt it first hand.
Jokić sent 18 shots and hit 14 of them, and to make the irony even bigger – in one situation he deliberately missed to secure himself a better position. It just demonstrates that he doesn’t care about statistics and plays so that his team will be better, no matter what the former NBA basketball players who attack him say in the past days.
In the middle of the last quarter with the score 100:91, when Detroit was still “in the game” to catch up with Denver, Jokic played a “spike” with Murray, and then attacked Wiseman with his back, pivoted and missed, and then bounced the ball off the backboard, to would return to his hands. A fraction of a second in which he thought faster than Wiseman (surname means sage, ed.) allowed him to try the shot again – and there was no mistake. Jokić scored easy points from a better position, and the Detroit player couldn’t do anything to him.
This is just one of countless examples of Nikola Jokić’s basketball intelligence, which is why he is the main candidate to become the MVP for the third year in a row. You simply don’t see this in other basketball players…
Nikola Jokic tips the ball to himself off the backboard over James Wiseman after missing his first hook attempt, to get it back and drain the jumper in the lane, in one of his many little moments of inspired basketball genius#Nuggets#MileHighBasketballpic.twitter.com/B0UHz0Gw38
— Joel Rush (@JoelRushNBA)March 17, 2023