How boldly taking the ball out of Nikola Jokić’s hands in crunch time clinched Game 5 for the Nuggets

The story of this era of Denver Nuggets basketball is the story of Nikola Jokić bailing out underwhelming rosters.

Their net rating drops by a million points whenever Jokić goes to the bench. They lose playoff games and series when his supporting cast can’t lift him up. The city of Denver holds its breath every time he gets subbed out of the game. Any possession that is not directly centered around him has the potential to go haywire. They’ve become so precarious that, in Saturday’s Game 4 win over the Clippers, head coach David Adelman kept him on the floor for the entire second half without a break.

This, in turn, has become the story of Denver’s first-round series against the Clippers. Can the Nuggets survive his brief breaks, and can the Clippers come up with funky defenses to confuse him long enough for them to seize control of otherwise lost games? That’s almost what happened on Saturday. The Nuggets led by 22 in the fourth quarter. The Clippers used a gimmicky 1-1-3 zone to stifle him long enough to go on a 32-9 run to nearly steal that game. It took an Aaron Gordon miracle to save it.

WATCH: Aaron Gordon dunks home incredible last-second buzzer-beater to stun Clippers in Game 4 win

Jack Maloney

Lo and behold, Tuesday’s Game 5 nearly played out very similarly. Just as they did on Saturday, the Nuggets built a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter. Once again, the Clippers trimmed it. With 4:01 remaining, the lead was down to nine. So, how did the Clippers execute this near-comeback? With yet another unusual defensive ploy. They put 6-foot-5 guard James Harden on Jokić.

If this confuses you, well, that’s understandable. Aside from standing half a foot shorter than Jokić, Harden’s defensive reputation has typically been as a laughing stock. The truth is more complicated. While he has his share of low-effort lowlights from random nights in the regular season, he tends to hold up better in high-leverage situations. More importantly, he has a few consistent virtues: His basketball IQ, his lightning-quick hands, and, most importantly for our purposes, his strength. He can stand his ground in the post against most big men, and his defenses have historically taken advantage of that.

Putting Harden on Jokić accomplished a few things. Most importantly, it made it harder for him to get the ball. Take a look at this play. Jokić passes the ball to Russell Westbrook on the wing and then attempts to get inside for an entry pass. With Harden on Jokić, however, the much bigger Ivica Zubac is on Westbrook. Therefore, to get Jokić the ball, Westbrook has to pass it high just to get it over the defender. That high pass allows Kris Dunn to sneak in and knock the ball away.

Here’s another similar play. Jokić gets the ball just inside of the arc. Harden gets low, preparing for Jokić to try to back him down. Instead, he runs a handoff with Jamal Murray. Once again, this sets the Clippers up to get multiple bodies between the ball and Jokić.

Murray gives the ball to Westbrook, which once again creates the Zubac barrier. Harden, one of the sturdiest guards in basketball, stands his ground with Jokić fighting him for post position. Westbrook doesn’t want to pass low because Harden’s quick hands will knock the ball away, but he doesn’t want to try another high pass either because he sees Kawhi Leonard lurking behind Jokić. So he clanks a jumper instead.

On this sideline out of bounds play, Jokić finally winds up getting the ball with his back to the basket on Harden. He manages to gain some ground, but this time Zubac is on Aaron Gordon, so he once again feels comfortable rotating over to double. Jokić is the rare passer who can work his way out of the jam, though, so he sneaks the ball around Zubac’s back. Once again, the lurking Leonard impacts the play by blocking Gordon’s dunk attempt.

An especially valuable tool putting Harden, specifically, on Jokić is that it opens the door for switching. No team wants to put a big man on an island against Murray, but the Clippers were comfortable with Harden in that matchup. This, again, accomplishes multiple things. Of course Murray’s matchup, Kris Dunn, isn’t going to guard Jokić one-on-one. But the Clippers can rotate help over to him as needed. However, putting a fast, playmaking guard on Murray during the switch makes the pass significantly more precarious. Watch Dunn knock this one away.

If any of this is starting to sound a bit familiar to you, it’s because it’s a version of a defense several teams have tried against Jokić in the past. Remember when the Lakers put Rui Hachimura on him? Or when the Timberwolves won a series with Karl-Anthony Towns defending Jokić? Many of the same basic principles apply.

A team’s best defensive playmakers are lurking near Jokić, ready to make a play on him if needed, but they aren’t burdened with the solo matchup because guarding him alone is impossible. This strategy relies on Denver opponents lacking faith in Jokić’s supporting cast. They are daring those other Nuggets to find a way to take advantage of all of this extra attention. They did against the Lakers, so they won. They didn’t against the Timberwolves, so they lost. The switching element with Harden is a bit newer, but these are principles plenty of teams have used against Jokić.

And, a lot of the time, the Nuggets really don’t care. Often their best offense is just letting Jokić figure it out. He got them across the finish line on Saturday even if it wasn’t always pretty. For so much of the past two years, there just hasn’t been a better option. And then, Playoff Jamal Murray returned.

Murray was great throughout Game 5. He scored 43 points in total. He has a lengthy history of following up ho-hum regular seasons with monster playoff runs. He’s never made an All-Star Game, yet he averages more playoff points per game than Larry Bird. Injuries robbed the Nuggets of that version of Murray last postseason. He came into the playoffs banged up this year as well, and his first four games against the Clippers were uneven. 

But he was great from the tip in Game 5, so the Nuggets did the unthinkable: They took the ball out of Jokić’s hands in the middle of the Clipper comeback and told Murray to save them. This was not an example of, say, the Nuggets building plays around Jokić that resulted in Murray shots. No, in their game-clinching stretch, Jokić largely wasn’t even serving as a pick-and-roll screener.

Frustrated with what the Harden matchup was doing to Jokić, the Nuggets found a different pick-and-roll they liked better. Zubac is a terrifying defensive presence at the basket, but he’s vulnerable on the perimeter. So the Nuggets decided that if they couldn’t run the Murray-Jokić pick-and-roll at him, they would just run a Murray-Gordon pick-and-roll at him instead. Check out this first play with a bit under than four minutes remaining. Murray holds the ball long enough to draw Zubac beyond the 3-point line. Then he slips a pocket pass between Dunn and Zubac to Gordon, who has a runway to the rim and finishes the layup. 

It’s a similar principle on the next play. Gordon brings the ball up. Murray races up to him for a handoff, but Zubac is nearly at the 3-point arc. He frantically drops back, and Dunn catches up to the play, but slips as Murray gets him to overcommit. He turns into a spin move and takes a fallaway jumper that Zubac isn’t quick enough to swat away with his height advantage. 

The play that effectively clinched the game, once again, started with Gordon screening for Murray. This time, however, Christian Braun pre-screened Zubac off of Gordon, forcing Bogdan Bogdanović to jump into the play. Denver sees this and immediately has Jokić come up to screen for Murray knowing that the Clippers will have to switch it, and that will leave Bogdanović, not nearly as stout as Harden, alone on Jokić. So Dunn, who has switched onto Gordon, panics. He races between Murray and Jokić to prevent a pass inside, and Murray makes the correct read to hit a wide-open Gordon for an easy 3-pointer. That pushed the lead up to 17 with less than three minutes remaining. Checkmate.

A stretch like this, especially after such an incredible overall game from Murray, is exactly what Denver needed. The Nuggets were never going to beat the Clippers four times out of seven with Jokić playing one-on-five. They had to know that they could trust the rest of their team to make the big plays and the right decisions when they counted. That’s what happened here. Murray was so good that Denver felt comfortable betting the game on him — not Jokić — as their half-court ringleader.

They don’t need to do that all of the time. We’re talking about Jokić, after all. You generally want him deciding the outcome of your games. They just need to know it’s available to them when a creative defense finds a curveball that bothers him.

They didn’t have that in Game 4. They haven’t had that for so much of the Jokić era. But they had it in Game 5, which got them one win closer to dispatching the Clippers, and also makes them a far more dangerous potential opponent for the heavily-favored Thunder in the next round.