The fate of a game and maybe a series was perched on the restless fingertips of Nikola Jokic, the most efficient maker of floaters in the basketball world.
He was about to release one with 21 seconds left in Monday night’s Game 2 of another captivating Nuggets-Timberwolves playoff series. It was going to tie the score at 115. Minnesota was going to call a timeout to set up the last possession of regulation. Denver was going to defend it out and hope to extend the game to overtime. Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels were going to be walking on thin ice if it got there, with five fouls each. Game 2 was going to meander past midnight.
The floater was the formality before all that. It’s almost as automatic as a layup for Jokic, especially when the rim protector is out of the picture — and Gobert was. He and McDaniels were stuck behind the play after a pristine pocket pass from Jamal Murray in the pick-and-roll. Anthony Edwards was the low man, contesting the shot for Minnesota. Helplessly, in all likelihood. Nuggets coach David Adelman said earlier this month that he would rather see Jokic shoot a floater over Victor Wembanyama’s 8-foot wingspan than shoot free throws with a game on the line. Edwards was an ant in comparison.
But Jokic balked. Halfway into his shooting motion, after the ball was reared back over his head, after his left foot had levitated off the ground, he reconsidered. Christian Braun was open in the dunker spot. Jokic lowered the ball and passed. Braun caught it low. The Wolves converged immediately. They fouled him under the basket.
Braun missed a free throw. Denver’s opportunity for a 2-0 series lead slipped away.
Jokic’s floater is still hanging in the air, in the imaginations of Nuggets fans. In his, too.
“I should definitely have taken that floater,” Jokic said after the series-tying 119-114 loss.
Braun volunteered to take the blame as well. Needing both free throws to tie the game, he split the pair, missing the first one. He was a 78.2% foul shooter in the regular season.
“You don’t have time to dwell on it,” Braun said. “I think I’m gonna be in that position again, and next time, I’ll step up and knock them down. It sucks. It’s not the whole game. But I feel like I make that free throw, and we’re in a lot better spot. So, kind of gotta take that one on the chin. That’s on me. And like I said, I’m gonna be in more pressure spots going forward, so I’m excited for those moments.”
“Rimmed out,” Nuggets coach David Adelman added. “That happens in the NBA. You’re gonna have moments you don’t want to remember. Thatap a tough moment for CB after playing such a good game. He was all over the place in this game. Has so much responsibility on both sides of the ball. So I feel for CB.”
Jokic and Murray combined to miss seven consecutive shots during clutch time as the Timberwolves seized control, led by Gobert’s sturdy defense against Jokic in the post. Denver’s three-time MVP center shot a 1-for-8 clip in the 20 minutes he shared the floor with Gobert in Game 2. He scored 20 of his 24 points when Gobert was trapped on the bench by foul trouble.
His most aggressive stretch of the game was a four-minute stint in the third quarter, when the Timberwolves couldn’t find an answer for Jokic between Naz Reid and a switching McDaniels. Jokic scored 12 of Denver’s points during a quick 14-5 run.
He was uncharacteristically out of rhythm the other 36 minutes he played, often hesitating to attack as a scorer. It all culminated with his abrupt decision to pass up his best shot, at the end of a 1-for-7 fourth quarter.
“I thought I had (Braun). Ant kind of stepped up and jumped up in the air. I thought I had a pass,” Jokic said. “… We had two free throws, so it’s not a bad ending. But I definitely should have took that floater.”
“You always want him to shoot that shot,” Adelman said. “But he sees what he sees out there. He’s playing. And if he sees his teammate open, he’s gonna make that play. … I trust the best player in the world to make the decisions he makes. He saw CB. … The decisions he makes in a game are always unselfish. They’re always for the right reasons. And I trust CB to make those free throws.”
Denver’s wayward finish to the game was also stamped by a questionable decision on the ensuing possession. Julius Randle made a pair of free throws to push Minnesota’s lead to 117-114, leaving the Nuggets with one last chance at a game-tying shot. But Murray didn’t hunt the 3-pointer. He slithered inside the arc for a midrange attempt instead, sealing the result with a miss that would have only cut the deficit back to one. He defended his decision to go for two afterward.
“We’re down three. We just need a bucket,” Murray said. “We have a timeout. I mean, if I hit the shot, they inbound it. They had Rudy and somebody else out there. We could have fouled them. He makes one, maybe. We call timeout. I mean, I have to make the shot for it to go well. So that was the problem. I didn’t make it.”
Meanwhile on Minnesota’s end?
“I was happy he took it,” Edwards said.
And equally happy when Jokic declined to take his floater.
