DENVER — Basketball is their business, but sometimes NBA players allow themselves to be fans, and just enjoy the game as fans, and like a lot of us, they enjoy watching Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic.
Th Toronto Raptors got an up-close look at the Serbian star who plays like Steve Nash if the Canadian Hall-of-Fame point guard was giant on Monday. The lumbering centre was averaging a triple-double for the season heading into the game and is the favourite to win his third consecutive MVP award.
And to their credit they did a lot more than watch as Toronto defended Jokic as well as is likely possible what ended up being 118-113 loss that could have easily ended up in the Raptors’ favour. Denver finished the game on a 20-8 run and was able to pull it out after the Raptors controlled the contest for most of the night, wasting an otherwise excellent effort from Toronto against one of the NBA’s best teams.
Jokic was limited to 17 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists on just eight field goal attempts — an off night for him — and Toronto used a mix of strong primary defending and aggressive help to limit the Denver star, led by O.G Anunoby.
“He worked tirelessly all night,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “It was really impressive.”
Nurse was less impressed with the flurry of free throws the Nuggets were able to get down the stretch, particularly a call on Scottie Barnes that got him ejected with 28.3 seconds to play. “I just watched it on film, there was nothing there,” said Nurse.
Barnes said he was talking to himself when Scott Foster tossed him. “I guess he took offence to it.”
The calls put the Nuggets on the line for three free throws. They made them all and were up four in what had been a one-possession game for most of the final quarter, and that was the difference. Toronto dropped to 32-34 and remains in ninth place in the Eastern Conference.
The Raptors got an excellent performance from their own centre as it was Jakob Poeltl (18 points, nine rebounds, four assists), who kept Toronto’s offence humming down the stretch. He scored three lay-ups with each assisted by smart, sharp reads by his teammates that had Jokic nodding in respect. The last put Toronto up six with 3:26 to play.
But the Western Conference-leading Nuggets, who improved to 30-4 at Ball Arena and 46-19 overall, wouldn’t lie down.
Jamal Murray – whose game is rounding into form nicely after missing all of last season with an ACL tear — wasn’t going to go down easily with a Canadian audience watching at home. The native of Kitchener, Ont. nailed a triple off a set-up from Jokic to pull Denver within three and then cut Toronto’s lead to one with 1:23 left on a solo drive to the rim as he finished with 24 points on 14 shots.
The Nuggets finally took the lead for just the second time in the game when Jokic stole the ball on a Fred VanVleet drive and was fouled by Poeltl and made both free throws to put Denver up one with 1:15 to play.
VanVleet then was fouled on a jumper and made his free throws to snatch the lead back. But Jokic made a couple more to take the lead back again, and Denver head coach Mike Malone was successful in challenging a call that would have put Barnes on the line for two.
The Nuggets gained possession on the jump ball and when the Raptors didn’t like a loose ball foul (on Poeltl) at the other end, Barnes was ejected with 28 seconds to play.
Poeltl missed a pair of three throws with 22 seconds to play, Michael Porter Jr. then made the Nuggets eighth free throw in the final 75 seconds of the game to escape with the win.
Toronto was led by VanVleet, who had 21 points and 14 assists while all five of the Raptors’ starters were in double figures as they shot 50 per cent from the floor and 10-of-27 from deep. The Nuggets shot 50 per cent and 13-of-33 from deep.
Jokic is the kind of player it’s hard to stop watching, in part because you don’t know what’s coming next — a no-look, 80-foot outlet pass for a no-dribble fastbreak or a wrap-around pass that somehow finds its way through a thicket of opposing arms and legs to hit a teammate for a lay-up. The appreciation of his game is more than simple professional respect .
“Ya, when I’m not playing against him, I’m a fan,” said Raptors forward Thad Young, who is a pretty smart, sharp passer himself, but nothing like Jokic. “I look at some of those passes and think ‘wow, that’s crazy’. He’s weaving a pass through three or four defenders for a lay-up, or a no-look pass over to defenders to the strong-side corner, stuff like that. The vision, the smarts and basketball IQ, it’s incredible.”
Defending him is a problem. He’s an efficient post scorer, arguably the best passer in the game and a dangerous threat from three who can run the break like a giant John Stockton, if a little more slowly. Coming into Monday, he was averaging 24.5 points, 11.8 rebounds and 10.0 rebounds while shooting 39.8 per cent on his three-point field goals, 67.1 per cent on his two-point attempts and carrying True Shooting percentage of 70.3. It’s an almost unprecedented combination of efficiency and shot creation and the main reason — along with the Nuggets record — that he’s always in the forefront of the MVP conversation.
Saying all of that, the Raptors had a solid scheme in place and executed at a superb level for the entire game. It was very impressive. They allowed Anunoby to defend Jokic one-on-one as much as possible, figuring that the Raptors wing had the best combination of size, strength, and quickness to contend with the six-foot-11, 265-pound Nuggets star. As well, when they did get in a situation when they had to switch it was often Anunoby switching on to Murray with Poeltl ending up as the last line of defence, which is hardly the worst thing. And when Jokic did get the ball with one foot in the paint, they swarmed him with help.
But it didn’t always work. On one possession in the first quarter, Precious Achiuwa – playing the role of Anunoby – denied Jokic a lane to the rim on the dribble and then fronted him in the post, preventing an entry pass. Eventually Jokic drifted to the three-point line and with the shot clock winding down arched a high three over Achiuwa and in, ruining an otherwise perfect defensive possession.
Jokic didn’t overwhelm the Raptors early and their scheme served to slow him down. The highlight-worthy passes were relatively few and far between, but he did start the game finding Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon on a cut underneath the basket and ended the half hitting Gordon with a perfect lob for an alley-oop.
“You have got opposing teams, setting their defence up to stop him from scoring a basket as opposed to staying home and just being solid, but if you stay home and be solid [don’t double] he might go get 40, and I think he does a great job of just kind of picking that apart,” Young said. “He tests the temperature in the beginning of the game, see how teams are gonna play and then throughout the course of the game, he just slowly picks them apart.
Best of all he makes it fun to watch, and fun for those playing with him too, if not for his opponents.
“He just makes the game so much fun,” said Raptors wing Will Barton, who played seven seasons with Jokic. “He just makes the right play almost every time it seems like, he’s so unselfish. He loves to get his teammates shots and he just plays the right way. “
Still, the Raptors were excellent from the opening tip, motivated perhaps by the challenge of facing the Western Conference’s No. 1 team on their homecourt.
Toronto shot 60 per cent from the floor in the first quarter and had all eight players in the game score as they jumped out to a 34-29 lead. The Raptors were up by as much as nine before the Nuggets got a pair of late scores in the final 36 seconds of the quarter. Neither Jokic or Murray were major factors early though the latter did hit a couple of early threes. The Raptors moved the ball and attacked the paint and were rewarded as they got to the line 10 times to just two for Denver.
Porter Jr. had the hot hand for Denver early and his third three of the half cut the Raptors’ lead to four late in the second quarter, after Toronto had held the edge when Jokic was on the bench. But Toronto kept grinding.
On the next possession, they got offensive rebounds from Barnes and Anunoby with VanVleet finally finishing the possession with a three. VanVleet then stole a Jokic pass and hit Pascal Siakam for a lay-up on the ensuing fast break to put Toronto up nine with the Raptors eventually pushing their lead to 10 with two minutes left in the half. But the Nuggets can score in a flash and finished the half on 7-0 run sparked by Porter Jr.’s fourth triple and punctuated by the Jokic-to-Gordon alley-oop to cut Toronto’s lead to 61-58 heading into the third quarter.
In the third, it looked like Murray was going to try and run Toronto off the floor. He had 10 points in the first 4:33 of the third quarter to give Denver their first lead of the game, up three. But threes from Anunoby, VanVleet and Gary Trent Jr. pulled Toronto back in front and helped the Raptors take a 88-83 lead into the fourth, in part because Jokic’s impact on the game had been – for his standards – fairly subdued: just 11 points, nine rebounds and five assists to that stage on 4-of-6 shooting: a good quarter’s work for him on many nights.
They were able to keep him reigned in during the fourth quarter too, but as the saying goes, you can’t defend the free-throw line, and that was the Raptors’ downfall.
