NBA Finals Game 3: Miami Heat vs Denver Nuggets live updates, how to watch
Nikola Jokić is a riddle. A fluid, shifting, evolving, intelligent and massive conundrum who can morph into what he needs to be. He is something out of a video game, a created player by a conflicted soul. He’s the Nuggets’ inside presence and floor general. A traditional center and a stretch big. He reads the game like a savant, sees all the angles like an elite point guard. Still, he gets buckets and inhales rebounds like a traditional dominant center. He’s huge, plodding and physical, while simultaneously dexterous. He’s got the everyman physique that seems perennially on the verge of exhaustion, yet his competitive fervor seems unextinguishable.
He is, in a word, ridiculous.
“If you’re watching the game, he’s doing some incredible stuff,” Murray said. “And he’s been doing it all playoffs. Just staying consistent no matter what they throw at him: double-teams, single coverage, help from the baseline, from the top, traps. He’s been figuring out it all and just being that consistent motor for us.”
Jokić has been the subject of much debate over the last couple of years. His back-to-back MVPs, and being in the mix for a third straight, led to questions about the measuring of his greatness.
This postseason, especially these last two series as he took down modern giants, has been a resounding rebuttal. In these playoffs, he’s beating all allegations against him. But like all legends in the making, Jokić needed to be vetted for special status. Not in statistics but on stage.
One of the difficulties of assessing Jokić, besides being in a small market, is how his game so defies basketball logic. That’s part of his profundity. The statistics and analytics only tell part of his story. They don’t totally encapsulate him, how unique a figure he is in the history of the game, the persistent novelty in his play. The rarified air he’s been ascending toward is so much bigger than data. It’s one thing to understand greatness. It’s another to behold it.
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(Photo: Getty Images)
