When it comes to Nikola Jokic, Isiah Thomas doesn’t see height. Heck, no. He sees a ninja. A cobra in a dragon’s body. In his mind, the Joker’s just another member of the club.
The point guard club.
“I look at Jokic as a 7-foot point guard,” Thomas, the NBA TV/Turner Sports analyst and longtime Detroit Pistons floor general, told The Post. “A 7-foot point guard (with) his passing skills, his ability to lead the break, rebound.
“I think coach (Michael) Malone does the right thing by playing through him, recognizing his guard skills and not necessarily looking at him as just a traditional 7-footer, but having the awareness to see the talent that he has.”
Yeah, but here’s the thing: Can a 7-footer really lead the NBA in assists? Isn’t 2020 over with? Aren’t we past the weird?
“I believe he can,” Thomas replied, “because of the way (the Nuggets) play their offense. Because of his decision-making, his passing ability. Every offensive decision starts with him. And he makes the decision of who’s going to shoot, who’s going to score. And when he’s not passing … he’s capable of scoring himself.”
Through the first fifth of the regular season, the Joker is putting up Oscar Robertson/Russell Westbrook numbers, darn near a triple-double every night: Through Saturday afternoon, the Serbian was averaging 25.5 points, 11.3 rebounds and 9.9 assists over 35.3 minutes per game.
But it’s the dimes that keep raising eyebrows. After Friday night’s action, Jokic remained the league’s leader in total assists, with 148 — 13 more than Dallas’ Luka Doncic. No starting NBA center has ever averaged double-digit in assists while appearing in at least 58 games. And no big man has led the league in total assists, the pride and purview of legendary point guards such as Thomas, since Hall of Famer Wilt Chamberlain did it back in 1967-68.
We’ve been down this road before with the Big Honey, who’s the only starting NBA center to average at least six assists per game over three consecutive seasons (2017-2020). But as the Nuggets get Michael Porter Jr. back into the rotation and work shooters such as Jamal Murray, Will Barton and JaMychal Green into the flow, Jokic could have plenty of snipers to feed over the weeks to come.
“Coach (Malone) is putting me in the right spot and I’m trying to just find an open guy,” the Nuggets All-Star said recently. “I love when everybody is involved. I think that’s really hard to guard when everybody is involved, when everybody expects the ball, and everyone is active on offense. That’s just really hard to guard, in my opinion.”
It’s even harder to put into context. Former Nuggets assistant Bob Weiss was Chamberlain’s teammate as a twenty-something point guard with the 76ers from 1965-67. By that point, the Big Dipper had become “bored with the game,” Weiss recalled, that basketball had become a job in which the prodigiously gifted Chamberlain could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
“I never thought of Wilt as a creative passer,” Weiss explained. “But he was willing to give the ball up … he passed well enough to get the assist title (in ’67-68) but he wasn’t the same kind of passer that Joker is. Nikola is a little more creative, a little more mobile. It’s such a great value in today’s game, because it allows you, if you’re a coach, so many more options.”
And other big men with great court vision haven’t been shy about passing the Joker their compliments. Hall-of-Famer Bill Walton (3.4 career assists per game) has sung Jokic’s praises, in his own Waltonesque way, on several occasions. And Vlade Divac (3.1 career assists per game), the Serbian native and former Lakers/Hornets/Kings center, said Big Honey is probably the best passing post player of the last three decades.
“Joker just surpassed everybody,” Divac told The Post last week. “He went to the next level.
“(His) basketball IQ is what impressed me. A lot of people in my time would ask me, how did I do it? And it was just hard to explain. You just see it before and you just do it. And I’m sure he does the same thing. He makes things happen before they happen.”
The only question is whether he can keep making it happen, statistically, over the next four months or so. Health shouldn’t be an issue: Jokic has appeared in at least 81% of the Nuggets’ regular-season games since the start of the 2016-17 season.
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“So that gave him at least 10-12 minutes a game more than Joker is getting to get for his assists,” Weiss said. “So it’s hard to compare apples and oranges now, because the game was so different then. But I mean, (Jokic) is just a tremendous asset. Just on another planet.”
Yeah, but can a 7-footer really lead the NBA in assists in this day and age? Over a full season?
“He could,” Weiss said. “The thing I like about Joker is, he doesn’t go out here trying to get any particular stat. And so if he wanted to lead the league in assists, if he wanted to put his mind to it, he probably could.”
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