Jokic gets just a little bit open here.
(Oak would lay him out next time down the floor for that pause) pic.twitter.com/s8uA5KCBbr
— Yaya Dubin (@JADubin5) February 11, 2017
It has been a very weird week for the New York Knicks, even by their admittedly lofty standards. With that in mind, Friday night’s game against the Denver Nuggets was highly anticipated for many reasons, but the actual basketball game seemed to rank near the bottom of the list. The Knicks might have bought into that as well, though, as their first quarter defense against Nikola Jokic landed somewhere between totally inept and purely comical.
With the score knotted at 15-15 at the seven-minute mark of the first quarter, Nuggets point guard Jameer Nelson began to penetrate against the Knicks in a halfcourt set. That drew the attention of both Brandon Jennings, who was guarding Nelson, and Kristaps Porzingis in a way that you wouldn’t normally see on an NBA court, and no one on the New York roster found it necessary to rotate in support.
The result of that mishap was the easiest shot of Jokic’s still-young NBA career. In fact, the young big man took his sweet time in lofting a shot at the rim, to the point where it may have even been taken as something of a slight against the Knicks. In this case, New York’s squad had no grounds to be upset, however, as they were solely responsible for two breezy points in Denver’s column.
