Nikola Jokic did something nice.
After leading the Denver Nuggets to their first championship in franchise history, the 6-foot-11 center was crowned NBA Finals MVP, rounding out a trophy case that he doesn’t give a Serbian horse’s behind about.
Jokic is now a winner of two NBA MVPs, a Finals MVP and a Western Conference Finals MVP to supplement the Larry O’Brien Trophy he and his teammates hoisted Monday night at Ball Arena. During the course of the five-game series, the Nuggets hung up posters in their locker room with a variety of motivational quotes, including Jokic’s own go-to phrase about the pursuit of a championship: “We have a chance to do something nice.”
Jokic averaged 30.2 points, 14.0 rebounds and 7.2 assists during the Finals while registering his ninth and 10th triple-doubles of the playoffs. He had already passed Wilt Chamberlain’s record for triple-doubles in a single postseason by Game 3, when he became the first player ever to amass a 30-point, 20-rebound, 10-assist game in the NBA Finals.
“The job is done,” Jokic said after winning the title. “We can go home now.”
During the 2023 NBA playoffs, the Joker led all players in the important base-level statistics — points, rebounds, assists, field goals made — as well as most advanced metrics. He was first in the league in player efficiency rating, win shares per 48 minutes, box plus/minus (an estimate of points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player), offensive box plus/minus and value over a replacement player. If the award went to the player with the best overall postseason, it would still belong to Jokic by a landslide.
But his Finals performance had a different type of distinction. Context is crucial, and for the Nuggets, the context was the occasional lapsing offense of their second- and third-best scorers. Jamal Murray, after averaging 32.5 points in the Western Conference Finals, had two of his four lowest-scoring games of the playoffs during the NBA Finals. He shot 45.1% in the series, down 5% from the WCF.
If Murray was a bit inconsistent, then Michael Porter Jr. was just consistently off. Signed to a max contract in 2021 because of his smooth 3-point stroke, he shot 14.3% from beyond the arc in the Finals and averaged 9.6 points for Denver.
Jokic was the Nuggets’ lone, steady, inevitable force. He made all four teammates on the floor with him better than they were without him. He dissected the Heat’s barrage of defensive coverages using his two-man game with Murray, facilitating pick-and-rolls, pick-and-pops, dribble handoffs, inverted ball screens and every other mutation of basketball offense imaginable. He never shied away from the open 3-pointer when Miami dared him. Why wouldn’t he take it? He entered the series making 47.4% and proceeded to drill 8 of 19 in the Finals.
Anything the Heat threw at Jokic, he answered. But between Games 3 and 4, the undeniable series MVP scrunched his nose unable to answer one thing.
Does he feel like there’s more of an emphasis on individual stats in the U.S. than in Europe?
“I only talk about people telling me my stats, and I’m trying to say it’s a team basketball,” he said. “… I think it’s how everything works. In Europe, it’s a little bit (more about) maybe the team, the winning. Here it’s winning, too, but maybe more stats. I don’t know. I really don’t know. Good question.”
Want more Nuggets news? Sign up for the Nuggets Insider to get all our NBA analysis.
