Basketball: Jokic triple-double leads Denver over Boston in NBA showdown

DENVER – Nikola Jokic delivered a triple-double with 30 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists in a Sunday showdown of National Basketball Association conference leaders that prompted a teammate to admit “without Jok, I don’t know where we’d be”.

Two-time reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Jokic made 10-of-13 shots from the floor, including both three-point attempts.

He also went eight-for-eight from the free-throw line to produce his ninth triple-double of the season as the Denver Nuggets beat the visiting Boston Celtics 123-111.

Said Denver guard Bruce Brown: “He’s my MVP. He should be the league’s MVP three times in a row. He’s doing everything for us. Without Jok, I don’t know where we’d be.”

The last player to win three consecutive MVP trophies was Celtics legend Larry Bird from 1984 to 1986. Pre-game, Denver coach Michael Malone expressed his annoyance at suggestions that his Serbian centre could not do the same.

He said: “If people’s reasons for not giving him the MVP is because he’s won two in a row, that’s lazy.”

The Nuggets improved to 24-12, stretching their Western Conference lead to one game with a 10th win in 12 contests as they snapped Boston’s four-game winning streak.

“We’re playing a good brand of basketball,” said Denver’s Andrew Gordon, who contributed 18 points, six rebounds and seven assists. “It’s about handling business. We ended up handling business.

“It’s not about the other team. It’s about the standard that we hold ourselves to. Tonight we held that standard.”

Denver, 14-3 at home, defeated the Celtics for the first time since November 2019. Brown added 21 points for Denver while Michael Porter Jr had 19.

Jaylen Brown led Boston with 30 points and eight rebounds while Jayson Tatum contributed 25 points, seven rebounds and six assists for the Eastern Conference-leading Celtics, who still have the best record in the NBA at 26-11.

Gordon defended the Boston stars, saying: “Those are special players. You try to make it difficult for them.

“You really aren’t going to be able to stop them. You try to make it uncomfortable for them, make their shots difficult, and that’s what we did.”

A broken rim halted the game for 34 minutes with 6:43 remaining in the fourth quarter and the Nuggets leading 110-97.

“There was no communication. They spent all that time trying to fix it, but when we came back, it still looked like it wasn’t even level, in my opinion. So we just wasted all that time,” ESPN quoted Jaylen Brown as saying.

“That has an effect on the game. That’s how injuries and stuff happen. Luckily that didn’t (happen), but that wasn’t good. That whole process was handled poorly, in my opinion, and that had an effect as well. But luckily nobody got hurt.”

The cause of the rim damage appeared to be Robert Williams III’s dunk with 8:06 remaining in the fourth quarter.

The Celtics centre said: “I didn’t know I did it until my teammates started blaming me.”

Malone, meanwhile, called the incident a “buzzkill”, adding: “There’s a joke in there: How many guys does it take to fix a rim in an NBA game?” AFP, REUTERS