As Nikola Jokic sees it, if you’re planning to chuck a full-court shot, you’d better have a good reason.
Luka Doncic didn’t in the All-Star Game. With 34.4 seconds remaining in the first half, Jokic inbounded the ball to his friend, intending for it to roll a bit before Doncic picked it up. The idea was to turn it into a “two-for-one” situation — get a shot off that leaves room for another possession.
But Doncic took it a little too literally. He plucked the ball off the ground and immediately heaved it off the top of the backboard while Jokic and the other All-Stars watched, bewildered.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Jokic told The Denver Post afterward. “I was mad at him. I was actually mad at him. Crazy.”
Rest assured, when Jokic does it, he has a good reason.
Dozens of times throughout his career in situations when an opponent needs to foul at the end of a game, Jokic has attempted to draw a 3-shot foul by going into his shooting motion deep in Denver’s own backcourt. It happened again Thursday night, when Jokic was some 75 feet from the hoop as Miami’s Duncan Robinson fouled him late in the game. Jokic was adamant toward the officials that he should have been awarded a third free throw.
“In my nine years with Nikola, you know how many times that’s happened?” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “I think what happens is, the referees are just looking at the location. ‘Well, there’s no way you’d be shooting a jump shot from 75 feet.’ But for me and for Nikola … forget the location. If I am in my upward shooting motion, it should be a shooting foul. It should be three free throws. Because it’s a 75-foot 3-point attempt. And I just want to make sure the league knows Nikola works on 75-foot pull-ups after practice every day.”
Malone was good-humored about the play, half-joking but also somewhat earnestly making Jokic’s case. The two-time MVP is yet to succeed at earning the three-shot call.
“It’s tough,” Malone said. “The referees have a really hard job, especially in a game like that where it is a slow, half-court, physical (game) — each possession is just mano y mano. It’s a very hard game to referee. But that’s what I see in those plays, is that he’s smart. He knows they’re going to foul. So he goes up into the shooting motion. And I don’t think he’s ever been rewarded free throws once. And hopefully that will change at some point.”
As for Jokic? When asked after a 103-97 win over the Heat if he thinks players should be rewarded for anticipating the foul, he stopped himself from diving into the topic.
“I think it’s — I’m not gonna say anything,” Jokic said.
LeBron James should make scoring history vs. Nuggets
The Nuggets’ next opponent, the Los Angeles Lakers, played a back-to-back coinciding with Denver’s on Wednesday and Thursday. In an overtime win Thursday, LeBron James moved within nine points of becoming the first 40,000-point scorer in NBA history — meaning he will likely reach the milestone during Saturday’s game against the defending champions.
James, who is averaging over 25 per game in his age-39 season, hasn’t scored fewer than 10 points in a regular-season contest since 2007. He averaged 32.5 points in the Lakers’ back-to-back sweep of the Clippers and Wizards.
