On the other end, no one guarded Davis more often than Jokic, who drew the matchup on 59 possessions in which Davis shot 11 for 19 with no turnovers. “We saw it against Minnesota, we saw it even in the end of season so we were just - I had a couple turnovers, I missed a shot, so I think it doesn’t surprise us but I think we’re going to figure it out because we did.” “We saw it before,” Jokic said of the Lakers trying an oversized lineup featuring James, Hachimura and Davis. On 17 possessions when guarded by Hachimura, Denver scored 14 points, with Jokic shooting one for three with three turnovers, according to NBA tracking data. On 50 possessions when guarded by Davis in Game 1, Jokic made eight of 10 shots and recorded 11 assists with just one turnover while Denver scored a scorching 76 points. After Anthony Davis earned the defensive assignment against Jokic to start, Rui Hachimura eventually took over in the second half. Jokic now owns two.Īnd yet Denver escaped with only a six-point win after leading by as many as 21 because of the Lakers’ success blunting Jokic’s effectiveness. Wilt Chamberlain (1967) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1970) account for two of them. A 30-point, 20-rebound tripledouble in the postseason has happened only four times. Jokic finished the first quarter with eight points, five assists and 12 rebounds - twice as many boards as all the Lakers combined. “That’s about the only difference that I can see.” “I feel like the only difference is Bron can jump higher than Jokic,” Caldwell-Pope, the guard in his first season with the Nuggets, told reporters in Denver after the victory. The two-time most valuable player scored 34 points, grabbed 21 rebounds and dished 14 assists in Denver’s Western Conference finals Game 1 win against the Lakers on Tuesday night. Three years after Kentavious Caldwell-Pope won an NBA championship by witnessing the full range of what LeBron James could do, he is now one game closer to reaching another NBA Finals in part because of the heroics of his newest superstar teammate, Nikola Jokic.
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