John Riordan: Wildcard baller Jokić finally emerges from NBA pack

The Serb has led the Nuggets to NBA Finals, a first for the Denver franchise.

Fri, 26 May, 2023 - 07:01

Novak Djokovic will return to compete in the US later this summer for the first time since 2021 after the government here lifted the Covid-19 vaccine mandate on international travellers.

Infamously, he wore his status like a badge of honour so he was an easy one to spot and stop. But now he will return to a different sort of reception, emphatically dethroned as America’s most beloved Serbian sporting star.

There is another much more relevant Joker in the pack.

The NBA’s best player, Nikola Jokić, will finally reach the promised land of a Finals appearance next Thursday night when he and his Denver Nuggets mount a challenge for the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the first time in their respective histories.

If you haven’t seen Jokić play, there is probably a good reason. The 28-year-old seems to care about nothing except basketball and family. He has presented a marketing dilemma for the NBA; their greatest exponent is the right type of boring. He gets it done on the court in the most clinical way and he avoids the other PR trappings that lead to overexposure.

He can well afford to, by the way. Last July, after securing his second NBA MVP award in a row, the Nuggets locked Jokić into a five-year $264 million deal, a supermax contract extension which is known as such because it essentially bypasses salary cap rules for a limited number of designated players who have put the time in.

It was the largest NBA deal ever. Not bad for a player who was drafted so low while playing in the Serbian league that the ads were on during the live telecast of that 2014 selection. His big breakthrough moment was missed and he flew under the radar in Colorado until it was too late for other teams to cope.

It’s not just the marketing executives of the NBA who have been trying to figure him out for years without success. Spare a thought for the players who must find a way of corralling one of the most skillful 6’11 centres of all time.

He is truly a unique player at his position, one that when you see him for the first time lumbering up and down the court, you could be forgiven for thinking he is making up the numbers while the slightly shorter guys around him make the game-winning highlights.

But then you see him gain possession, orchestrate play, sling around unimaginable passes and drop in elegant buckets from mid-range two-pointers to undefendable threes and a rounder picture sharpens into focus of why he is revered and feared across the league.

Because of the fact that he is named as a centre, his obligations to multitask between attacking and defending should be even more cumbersome than his teammates. The size of a player like him can often pigeonhole that slower big man into existing solely under both baskets, notching easy dunks and straightforward rebounds at the offensive end and blocking or gobbling up missed shots at his own end.

But Jokić, famously, is a little reserved when his team doesn’t have possession, preferring to pop up as a reluctant menace rather than a more energetic assassin when the other team is looking to make a play.

He operates with the calm air of someone who knows rightly that everything will be ok when the ball inevitably returns happily to his embrace. That’s where the damage starts for the other teams, none of whom have truly figured out what to do with him.

When he was winning those MVPs for his regular season performances, the naysayers found comfort in his team’s playoff losses to the Phoenix Suns in 2021 and then 2022’s eventual winners, the Golden State Warriors. It gave them a little bit of ammunition to pick holes in his status as the league’s greatest.

They have to work hard to find fault. For context and just by way of slightly lazy comparison, Jokić is the unstoppable and unmarkable David Clifford or Erling Haaland of the NBA.

In spite of being freakishly tall, he finds a way to exist as a graceful proponent of above average scoring. It’s one thing to upend the unfortunate defender tasked with shackling you, it’s quite another to make the net swish as often as he does.

I won’t bore you with the deeper stats but suffice to say that he is a triple double machine, so driven by a complete dedication to victory that his scoring, rebounding and assists are all routinely in the double figures.

It’s worth repeating that his passes are in some ways the most demoralising aspects of his armoury. What do you do when he’s in possession? Surround and press him and hope for the best. But he loves that because a teammate will open out enough space for Jokić to find him and set the table for an easy score.

If there is a fault in his game, it is that he is not as dedicated as he should be to the defensive side of his responsibilities. Traditionally that can be a major failing for an NBA player because of the nature of the sport: as soon as you score or lose possession, your responsibilities change immediately and it becomes a five-man obligation to prevent the opposition scoring.

There is less room for error when compared with other codes, a pretty obvious turn of events in such a confined space. If you have a player on your books who is born with the physical gift of a seven-foot frame, you are expected to use that extra edge.

He often seems reluctant to move himself into critical zones and he will never exert more than a flirtation with blocking or or preventing the player on the other side from making a two or three. It’s almost comical at times until he makes up for it at the other end.

Why has it taken this long to make the players around him rise up to the level required? Better late than never. The Nuggets have finally cracked the code this season and thanks to the form and injury-free scenarios being enjoyed by players like Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray, they have paced themselves nicely right through to a 4-0 sweep of the LA Lakers, opening out a nine-day rest before next week’s reckoning begins.

Part of the impact of that pacing was Jokić joyously taking the foot off the break as the regular season wound up, taking so much time off that he was nudged out of the MVP race by the Philadelphia 76er, Joel Embiid.

The Cameroonian is similar to Jokić in many ways. They are an inch apart in height and they are both more skilled and more relied upon than they should be, given the huge bodies they are forced to drag around the hardwood.

But for many reasons, probably mainly to do with the mismanagement of the club in which Embiid finds himself, there’s only one left standing with the final pairing almost set.

This column is going to print in a world where the Boston Celtics are still just about hanging on, 3-1 down to the improbable feelgood story of the Miami Heat.

A month from now, the highly touted French prospect Victor Wembanyama, all 7’4 of him, will be drafted number one by the San Antonio Spurs. He is potentially even more of a unicorn talent than Jokić.

But right now, it is Jokić’s time.

For the critics and advocates who affectionately refer to Jokić as the Joker, there is a telltale combination of reverence and confusion layered on top of the obvious rhyming scheme.

Probably not for the first time but someone cracked on Twitter during the week that he looks like he plays in flip flops when he clambers from key to key. We mortals can laugh it up all we want but we’ve never had to drag limbs like those around.

The joke's on us because it’s difficult to see any other outcome in June than the Nuggets winning their first ever title. And it's an especially painful joke for his opponents who can find no way of stopping him.

@JohnWRiordan