LOS ANGELES — As he proudly wore a hat that proclaimed the Denver Nuggets as the Western Conference champions, general manager Calvin Booth quickly diverted attention toward the star that played a major role in securing the team’s first NBA Finals appearance in franchise history.
The topic involved Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, and how his eighth NBA season compared to his other ones.
“I think it’s his best one,” Booth told Sportsnaut. “The team success and individual performances and the consistency of those performances are unparalleled.”
After all, the Nuggets had just finished a 113-111 win over the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals on Monday at Crypto.com Arena that featured Jokic making NBA history. By posting 30 points on 11-for-24 shooting along with 14 rebounds and 13 assists in 45 minutes, Nikola Jokic set an NBA record for most triple-doubles in a single postseason. Jokic collected his eighth playoff triple double, which broke Wilt Chamberlain’s seven that he set in the 1967 NBA playoffs.
“No one ever could have seen that he’d be a two-time MVP, passing Wilt Chamberlain it seems like every other night,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “That speaks to his dedication to his craft, getting in great shape and understanding that for him to fulfill his potential, he had to work harder.”
After all, the Nuggets selected Nikola Jokic at No. 41 in the 2014 NBA Draft after harboring two impressions. They became intrigued with Jokic’s passing and paint presence after playing in his native Serbia both for its national team and professionally (KK Mega). They became concerned, however, about Jokic’s pudgy frame and his lack of conditioning. So much that the Felipe Eichenberger, the Nuggets’ strength and conditioning coach, has joked that Jokic struggled even holding a plank for 30 seconds.
Since then, Nikola Jokic often incorporates planks into his workouts. He has cut out soda and sugary foods in favor of protein-heavy meals. And Jokic lifts after every game both to increase his stamina and to maximize his recovery days. Those habits came in handy when Jokic played for the final 9:16 of the second quarter and the entire second half in Game 4.
“Nikola, and I’m not joking when I say this, is just an ultra-conditioned athlete,” Malone said with a straight face. “The guy can play for minutes on top of minutes and play at a high level. You saw the plays he made down the stretch.”
Nikola Jokic takes over Game 4
Nikola Jokic sure made plenty of plays.
With the Lakers holding a 73-58 half-time lead, Jokic led the Nuggets on a third-quarter charge. Denver took an 82-81 lead with 4:39 left in the third quarter after going on a 24-8 run that included Jokic posting 10 points and an assist during that stretch. He then added seven more points in the fourth quarter, including a layup past Lakers forward Anthony Davis for a 113-111 lead with 51.7 seconds left.
“You don’t care about how tired you are,” Jokic said. “You don’t care about minutes, your fouls, shots, percentage, this and that. You just want to win a game.”
Jokic also won the game by making shots that seemingly only he could make.
As the shot clock ticked close to zero with 8:45 left in the second quarter, Jokic stepped away from Lakers star LeBron James and hoisted a 26-foot fallaway. The ball dropped into the basket just as Jokic fell backwards. A similar incident happened later in the game. With the Nuggets holding a 107-104 lead with 2:54 remaining, Jokic only had two seconds left before the shot clock expired. As Davis guarded him closely, Jokic threw up a 25-foot fallaway. That shot also splashed through the net.
“When you have a guy like Jokic, who as big as he is but also as cerebral as he is, you can’t really make many mistakes versus a guy like that,” James said. “Even when you guard him for one of the best possessions that you think you can guard him, he puts the ball behind his head Larry Bird-style and shoots it 50 feet in the air and it goes in.”
After his comments drew laughter in the interview room, James then tipped his hat as a nod to Jokic. Reporters then relayed James’ commentary to Jokic.
“I’m going to take this as my signature shot,” Jokic said, sparking more laughs. “I’m joking. I don’t know. In that situation you’re just trying to shoot and you’re just trying to score. To be honest, I think that’s kind of the easiest shot because you need to shoot it.”
Clearly, there doesn’t seem to be much that Nikola Jokic can’t do. He already has won two NBA regular-season MVP awards. Jokic averaged 24.5 points and 11.8 rebounds in the 2022-23 campaign, numbers that were slightly lower than his second MVP season. But Booth argued Jokic actually played better this season because “he had to build chemistry on the fly.” That entailed integrating two healthy players (Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr.) and two key newcomers (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown). That partly explains why Jokic posted career-highs in shooting percentage (63.2%) and assists per game (9.8) and why the Nuggets finished with the Western Conference’s best record (53-29).
Those numbers were not enough for Nikola Jokic to win a third consecutive regular-season MVP award, an honor that only Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell accomplished. Instead, Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid won the award after averaging a league-leading 33.1 points per game this season. The MVP debate went beyond comparing team and player performances. Some of the commentary became divisive over proponents of certain candidates pointing out weaknesses in other candidates. ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins also argued that race played a factor in MVP voting.
“I think the negativity around the MVP race I think did get to him. I can’t blame him,” Malone said. “The guy goes out there and does his job every night and he is being criticized. I don’t know if it definitely did, but I think there was a part of him that was probably like, ‘You’re attacking my game. Listen, if you don’t like my game, that’s fine. If you want to vote for Joel Embiid, great. Joel was a well-deserved winner this year. Great player. Giannis [Antetokounmpo], great player. Champion your horse, whoever you love.’ But the negativity and the knocking that happened this year, I know it pissed me off, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it got to Nikola a little bit. But I think that’s a question probably better served for him.”
Nikola Jokic still sounded apathetic over that topic. Why wouldn’t he? He had just won the Western Conference Finals MVP award after averaging 27.4 points on 50.6 percent shooting, 14.5 rebounds and 11.8 assists through four games against the Lakers.
“I don’t think about MVPs anymore,” Nikola Jokic said. “I think people are just mean in saying that Embiid shouldn’t have won it. I think he should have won it. I think he was playing, if you watch it, extremely, extremely tough basketball through the whole season.”
Those in the Nuggets organization would say the same thing about Nikola Jokic, a player they trust will become an even better version of himself amid his efforts to deliver the franchise their first NBA championship.
Mark Medina is an NBA Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.