According to Shams Charania of ESPN, Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic will miss at least four weeks after suffering a hyperextended knee injury in the game against the Miami Heat last night.
This is essentially the best case scenario for the Nuggets and Joker after he went down clutching his knee at the end of the second quarter. It appeared that Spencer Jones inadvertently stepped backward onto Jokic’s foot, causing his leg to lock and his knee to bend awkwardly. When Jokic crumpled to the floor in a heap fans feared the worst. Luckily, Jokic has avoided disaster and will be able to return to the Nuggets lineup this season.
The loss of Nikola for at least a month will not be easy though. The Nuggets are already missing three other starters due to injury (Christian Braun, Aaron Gordon & Cam Johnson), though Braun and Gordon appear to be close to returning. In the interim, Jamal Murray is the lone opening night starter still available. He’s off to the best start of his career and looks to earn his first All Star selection, but he’ll be asked now to fully carry the load as the number one option on offense.
The expectation is that Jonas Valanciunas will now enter the starting lineup. Up until last season, Big Val essentially started every game of his career so he’s no stranger to the role or minutes and as a guy who potentially will be a free agent at the end of the season he probably welcomes the opportunity to get big minutes and show that he can still be relied on as an everyday starter. Obviously no one can replace Jokic and what he does on the basketball court, but Jonas is one of the best backup centers in the league and can still give Denver a lot of the same looks on offense, even if he can’t be relied on to be the absolute fulcrum of the offense like Nikola is.
Moving Valanciunas into the starting group also pulls one more member out of the Nuggets rebuilt bench. Tim Hardaway Jr. and Peyton Watson, regular reserves in the rotation, are now starting while Jones has been the diamond in the rough two-way player that’s suddenly become a starter. Of Denver’s original four man bench unit, only Bruce Brown is left. The rest of the bench is currently being filled out by the same players who struggled in full time rotation roles last year. Julian Strawther, Jalen Pickett and Zeke Nnaji are going to be asked to fill twenty plus minutes a night. While you certainly hope that these guys are ready, that’s not been the case on a consistent basis thus far in their now multi-year careers.
There’s also the question of simply replacing the sheer production of Nikola. It’s going to take a group effort and some parts will be harder to replace than others. Valanciunas probably fills in just fine in terms of rebounding and giving Denver size for screening and helping on defense, but the absence of Jokic’s sheer volume of scoring and playmaking is not so easily replicated. Hardaway Jr essentially becomes the de-facto number two scorer until Gordon or Braun return, and he won’t be putting up thirty points a night. Where Denver gets that extra scoring support after THJ is hard to see. Jones, Big Val and Watson aren’t typical scoring options, and Strawther is the only player left on the bench who’s shown the ability to put up big shooting numbers but he’s yet to show he can do it consistently.
And the playmaking? That might be the hardest part to replace of them all. The Nuggets are uniquely built around Jokic who is himself incredibly unique. Both Murray and Brown, the “point guards” in the rotation, are not traditional point guards because they don’t have to be when Nikola is on the floor running the offense. Gordon, Watson, Jones, all of these guys play in a role that is elevated by plays being routed through the high elbow or the post. Now those plays will come from the perimeter where Murray & Brown (or perhaps more likely, Pickett) are best operating the offense. Whether its asking the guards (or Val) to create more, or the forwards to adapt to a different style of offense, it’ll be difficult to install on the fly.
This means that, while the Nuggets have avoided a disaster with Nikola’s injury, one has to expect their record will suffer over the course of January. The immediate outlook is grim. Denver currently has lost three of their last four games and still has five games remaining on their season long seven game road trip. Four of those five games are against teams with winning records. That is a tall order for Murray and the reserve group. There could be some hope with the potential returns of Braun and Gordon, but they’ll need time to get back to game speed after a lengthy absence. Johnson is still likely weeks away from returning. Denver’s schedule will ease up somewhat as January progresses but it’s still littered with road trips and tough opponents, all leading up to a February 1st showdown against the Oklahoma City Thunder. If you’re targeting a game for Nikola to return, it sure would be nice to have him for that one.
Currently the Nuggets are third in the standings and in a three-way tie in the loss column with the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers. The Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns are just two and three games back from Denver respectively. There’s a bit of a break there, with the eighth seeded Golden State Warriors having six more losses than the Nuggets, but it’s not hard to see how Denver could fall into play-in territory by the time Nikola gets back. That isn’t a deal breaker though. With the All Star break happening second week of February it seems realistic, given the injury timeline reported, that the Nuggets will have their star player back in time to make a post ASB run. I don’t expect they’d be a play-in team for long and probably will still have plenty of time to work their way back into a top four seed.
All things considered, its good news today after very bad news last night. First and foremost Nikola needs to get better, Denver (the team and the fans) should be as patient as necessary for him to return to the court. The Nuggets will obviously not be nearly as potent of a basketball team in that time, but so long as they get Jokic back healthy, they’ll be a threat no matter where they land in terms of post season seeding. Get well soon Nikola.
