The name’s Jokic. Nikola Jokic.
He might have blown his cover last week. Jokic moonlights as an average defender, but he clearly has something going for him at his self-described weaker end of the floor: either revolutionary basketball intellect or James Bond-ian surveillance skills.
In an amusing locker room exchange last Friday, Timberwolves stars Anthony Edwards and Rudy Gobert shared their disbelief that Jokic had correctly identified and demolished a play that Minnesota was about to run. Gobert was in the middle of his postgame interview scrum when Edwards interrupted to bring up the sequence.
“That was crazy,” Gobert responded. “We have a spy on the bench. Jokic knew the play, but we didn’t say anything. He knew the play better than us.”
It was after a timeout with six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. As is standard, Minnesota had a specific play planned for its next possession coming out of the huddle. But Jokic, standing between Edwards and Gobert around the free-throw line, removed his mouthguard and shouted directions to Christian Braun and Russell Westbrook, pointing to where the ball would go. Gobert’s gaze shifted back and forth between Jokic and Edwards, his expression dumbfounded.
The possession ended in a turnover. Aaron Gordon deflected a pass to a rolling Gobert, and Jokic scooped up the steal.
“Nobody said nothing,” Edwards interjected again from outside the scrum, adding that it was a play Minnesota hadn’t run in a long time. “He said, ‘Hey, he’s gonna come over here and screen right here.’ … Me and Rudy looked at each other and said, ‘How the (heck) did he know?’”
Jokic’s explanation downplayed the moment as sheer familiarity. “We are playing against them 11 times last year and two times this year,” he said. “so you kind of remember.” But his new partner in pick-and-roll defense, Braun, reminded reporters Monday that Jokic has done this before — that his clairvoyance is not limited to the Timberwolves matchup.
“He does that a lot. He honestly does it every game,” Braun said after shootaround at Ball Arena. “He does it every game, but there was even one possession — you guys can go find it — he grabbed me and moved me into where I was supposed to be. And I was in the right spot for how we guard. But he knew their play. I knew what we do. He knew what they were gonna do. So he literally grabbed me and put me in a different position. … He does that pretty often, so it’s not really a shocker to me, but it’s kind of funny to see other teams’ reactions to it.”
Jokic is not the physical prototype of an elite defensive big man. He’s wide. He plays at the level of the screen instead of dropping into coverage because the Nuggets don’t need him immediately stationed in the vicinity of the basket to block shots. He reels in rebounds by the dozens, but he doesn’t play above the rim. He doesn’t often win one-on-one matchups as an isolation defender. He relies on his hands, anticipation and spatial awareness to intervene in an opponent’s two-man game.
“I’m just there to not mess up,” Jokic told The Denver Post last season, crediting former Nuggets guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope for their chemistry and effectiveness at guarding pick-and-rolls. “He’s a really good defender, and I’m there to just try to help him a little bit. As much as I can. But it’s mostly him.”
Since taking Caldwell-Pope’s place in the starting lineup, however, Braun has noticed even more what he already saw last season: Jokic’s role in the defense may be understated to the naked eye, but it’s significant from a tactical knowledge standpoint.
“If you get the call, sometimes that’s easy (to break up the play). But he doesn’t need the call,” Braun said. “He’ll see where a guy is on the court. If, say, Mike Conley gets below the free throw line (and is) coming back out for three, he sees stuff like that and he’ll call it out before. … We know a lot of (Minnesota’s) inbounds plays. Same way they know ours. We scout. They scout. But he picks stuff up right when he hears the call or even if he sees it without getting the call. He’s definitely not one or two steps — he’s a lot of steps ahead of a lot of people.”
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Enough steps ahead to even stun Gobert, a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year.
“That (expletive) is cheating, bro,” Edwards joked back in the Timberwolves’ locker room.
“We gotta launch an investigation,” Gobert responded.
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