Teammates of Nikola Jokic are fond of saying that to play alongside him is to exist on the edge of one’s seat constantly, without the opportunity to lean back. Usually that applies to the art of catching his unexpected, deceptive passes. Last Saturday in Los Angeles, the premise worked in reverse.
Fortunately for Peyton Watson, he understood the assignment.
“I was super-surprised,” Watson told The Denver Post. “Because he was like, ‘Throw it up.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean, throw it up?’ He said, ‘Throw it like a lob.’”
Jokic being on the receiving end of an alley-oop is a foreign enough concept on its own. But the lob in question was 94 feet from the basket. With 0.3 seconds remaining in the third quarter of a blowout win, Jokic had decided it was time to conduct his latest science experiment.
Anthony Davis had just made a free throw for the Lakers. Jokic was about to go to the bench for a well-earned breather. First, he wanted to make the most of his remaining time. A player isn’t allowed to catch and shoot with only 0.3 seconds on a shot or game clock. To get an attempt off before the buzzer, it has to be a tip. Jokic instructed the 22-year-old forward Watson to place the inbound pass at the ideal height, with delicate touch, so that he could try a full-court tip-in.
“I’m like, ‘OK, you’re seriously about to try to make this?’” Watson thought as Jokic got in ready position.
He almost did. The center one-timed Watson’s pass 77.6 feet on a perfect parabola, eliciting a collective gasp from the crowd at Crypto.com Arena — a literal slap shot, one that would make Nathan MacKinnon proud.
Jokic told The Post he had never practiced it before.
But the ball traveled within a foot of the rim at its closest point. It might have been the most magnificent missed shot in NBA history.
“I can’t even make a full-court shot,” Watson said. “… I can get it there. But like, it’s hard for me to come that close on a full-court shot.”
“He doesn’t try stuff like that (in practice),” Christian Braun said. “But, I mean, he does trick shots like that all the time. After the whistle, he throws stuff up all the time and it goes in. When he gets the ball, (he will) throw it backward off the shot clock (above the backboard). He does that all the time. Stuff like that, he likes to do.”
Jokic made three shots from the perimeter in the win, but he ironically fell out of the league lead in 3-point percentage that night because of the hopeless full-court attempt. At the end of the game, his 56.3% clip was 0.1% behind first place. (He has since reclaimed the league lead, at 53.4% after 17 games.)
“He doesn’t really care,” Braun said. “He’ll let it fly if he catches it. So I was not surprised he shot it. I was surprised at how close it got. But it doesn’t really surprise me anymore. He does (crap) like that all the time. It’s just kind of like, that’s Nikola.”
Braun said he would never try something like that. Watson speculated that Jokic’s near-miracle was a result of the “velocity he put on it. I think it was just like a fingertip touch. He has the best touch in the game.” Multiple other players told The Post that they felt this particular shot was an example of sheer luck, rather than talent. But maybe that’s the point: That Jokic’s talent is so immense, he deserves the benefit of the doubt in cases of luck. Even Lakers coach JJ Redick seemed to gaze toward the Nuggets’ end of the court in bewilderment for a moment as his own players walked toward him.
Did the three-time MVP surprise himself with how close the shot came?
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“A little bit,” Jokic said in his usual deadpan, “but I mean, when you shoot, you try to make it.”
Then the buzzer sounded, the players returned to their respective huddles, and life moved on. The moment was so nonchalant that Michael Porter Jr. didn’t even notice what had happened from the bench. After he watched a replay of it later, he was left speechless.
“I didn’t see it in person. I just saw the video. Yeah, I don’t … I mean … His … I don’t know,” Porter said, breaking into laughter after straining to offer a rational explanation. “I don’t know how he did that.”