As the third quarter of Friday’s Game 3 ended, Nikola Jokic ambled to the Nuggets’ bench and tugged his drenched jersey over his face.
He was frustrated, his team down 14 points heading into the fourth quarter with seemingly no answers for Phoenix’s dynamic backcourt. But there was guilt, too, after he’d just gone 4-for-11 in the quarter, and his team got outscored by 10.
Whether Jokic’s culpability had any merit (it, of course, did not) was immaterial. The fact that he felt responsible, on a night he joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain as the only three players in NBA playoffs history with at least 32 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists in one game, said everything one needs to know about Jokic’s character.
All that matters to him is winning, which is why Denver’s third consecutive loss to Phoenix stung so much.
The night he was awarded the MVP trophy, Jokic played with the type of effort that leaves an imprint on a team’s culture. He competed because thatap what he’s wired to do. Itap the reason he wanted to play all 72 games during the regular season. The idea of resting when healthy didn’t compute.
“He follows up the MVP award presentation by putting on an MVP performance,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “Itap just unfortunate that that was wasted.”
In the postgame locker room, after the Nuggets fell behind 3-0 to move to the verge of elimination, Jokic apologized to his team.
“I said to the guys, ‘It was my bad, I really needed to be better,’” Jokic said. When he relayed that message to reporters, he said it with the seriousness of a heart attack.
If it wasn’t so genuine it would’ve been laughable.
“I tried my best, for real,” he said. “I just didn’t want to lose.”
Jokic lamented missing some bunnies near the rim and was frustrated after shooting 13-of-29, including 1-of-6 from 3-point range. This, despite the fact that he rolled his ankle in the second quarter, was described as mentally and physically exhausted by his head coach earlier in the week and had no idea what kind of supporting help he’d get.
It turned out, not much.
Only reserves Monte Morris (21 points) and Will Barton (14) played with commensurate urgency and confidence. Michael Porter Jr.’s 15 points on 5-of-13 shooting felt like another win for the Suns given his potency.
Down 99-83 with 6:40 left in the game, Jokic wrangled one of the most ridiculous offensive rebounds of his career over four Suns players. Jokic whipped the ball off the backboard with his right hand, got the fingertips of his left hand on the ricochet, corralled it, and tipped it to himself three more times before throwing a no-look pass to Barton for a dunk.
The game was probably over. It was a meaningless sequence in terms of the final outcome, and the odds of him securing the loose board were probably the same as Denver’s chances of winning this second-round playoff series. Yet it was emblematic of the effort he put forth with his beleaguered team dragging toward the end of its season.
Thirty seconds after he snared the offensive rebound, he drew a technical foul for barking at officials. The Nuggets were down 14 at that point, their hopes of a comeback fading quickly. But their leader hadn’t conceded.
“You can’t buy heart,” Morris said of Jokic. “You can’t teach toughness … you just gotta have it in you, and he’s definitely got that.”
Itap why, according to Morris and Malone, the Nuggets aren’t ready to roll over heading into Game 4. A comeback, while technically possible, isn’t on anyone’s mind. What matters going into Sunday is competing, and nobody does it better than Jokic.
“I know Nikola, I love Nikola, I know that come Game 4, he’s gonna be with me and we’re going to try to do everything we can to prolong this series,” Malone said.
