Long after the shockwaves disseminated at Ball Arena, ripe with the smiles of a course-correcting 129-93 win over the Jazz, Nuggets head coach Michael Malone asked Nikola Jokic if he knew that flick was going in.
“Actually,” Jokic responded, as Malone recalled Friday night, “I did.”
The art of the full-court heave, for all intents and purposes, is dying. Save for a few standard-bearers around the NBA — think the Celtics’ Payton Pritchard and the Warriors’ Stephen Curry — players of all ilk are content, generally, to let first or second-quarter buzzers end without chucking up an unlikely bomb that’d drop their field-goal percentage. Most, sneakily, will let a 75-footer fly a split second after the horn in the illusion of an attempt.
Jokic, the man who stuffs stat sheets and says little in the process, has never been one for such theatrics. He’d dropped his three-point percentage, entering Friday night’s game against the Jazz, from a possible 44% to 41.5% simply by throwing up 19 heaves in 2024-25. No matter.
“Like, I’m trying to win,” a typically noncommittal Jokic said, “and score in that situation.”
And thus, with 4.1 seconds left in the first half and the Nuggets up 54-47 on Utah, Jokic took an inbound and one-two Euro-stepped his way around Jazz guard Collin Sexton. Rearing back, he fired a one-handed moonbeam 62 feet towards the opposing rim, as casual as an accountant chucking an unwanted spreadsheet in the trash.
Jokic knew it was good. Teammate Michael Porter Jr., standing next to him, knew it was good.
The toss fell to Earth and swished home so neatly it upturned the net, as Ball Arena erupted. Jazz guard Collin Sexton, who did all he could in a 20-point effort Friday, slouched his shoulders, deflated. One fan, as Jokic exited the tunnel at the halftime break, bowed two hands to the center in sheer reverence.
“He’s one of a kind,” Nuggets forward Peyton Watson marveled of Jokic postgame. “He’s one of one. What he does out there can’t be duplicated.”
After a sloppy first half, the Nuggets committing 11 turnovers, Denver shot out of a cannon after Jokic’s buzzer-beating launch. And the center closed the Jazz out with a ho-hum 27 points, 13 rebounds and six assists. Porter added 20 as he continues to find his three-point stroke and Russell Westbrook operated nicely in the midrange to 17 points.
And the three-time MVP was in typical deadpan form, postgame, peppered with locker-room questions on his stroke of first-half magic.
On if he felt off-balance after veering around Sexton: “I’m off-balance last 15 years, so.”
On any possible hesitation on such heave attempts to preserve his three-point percentage: “Zero. I don’t care.”
On competing in a heave competition if they put it in All-Star Weekend: “I think that would be really bad competition.”
What he did praise was Denver’s defense, telling reporters it was “where it’s supposed to be,” after weeks where it hadn’t been. Against the tanking Jazz, they played personnel beautifully — giving Jazz rookie Isaiah Collier a cushion in an 0 for 7 night, pressing up on sparkplug Keyonte George in a 5 for 17 night — and were buoyed by ascending 6-foot-7 wraith Peyton Watson.
Starting in place of the injured Jamal Murray, Watson met Sexton at the rim to ward off a layup on one second-quarter possession, then closed out on him so viciously that Sexton stepped out of bounds a few seconds later. He stuffed three Nuggets shots, and sprinted from halfcourt to chase down and foul Utah’s Kyle Filipowski on a second-half breakaway. And Watson soared for three dunks in less than a minute of clock in the third quarter, capping off the sequence with a windmill, roaring to the crowd at Ball as Jazz coach Will Hardy called for a timeout.
“Peyton was our defensive player of the game tonight,” Malone said, postgame. “I felt he did a really nice job for us. He’s playing really good basketball for us right now, and that’s great to see, because he’s an important piece for this franchise — not just this year, but obviously moving forward.”
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.
Originally Published:
