RealGM

22,7 and 5 in 26 minutes vs the Spurs tonight. Kid is a beast, what a steal by the Nugs.

His craftiness kind of reminds me of Pau a little.

He's looking very impressive. Looked good when the Laker's played him too. The Nuggets may have dropped the ball on the Mudiay pick but they made up for it by drafting Nikola Jokic. Only thing is I don't see how he can co-exist with Nurkic, Lauvergne, Faried, etc. The Nuggets have a plethora of front court talent, but I think there strengths overlap. They should trade at least one of them and get a quality guard/point guard in return.

Mudiay will get there. The physical tools are there and according to Malone, his attitude is excellent.

But this thread is about Jokic. The dude can really play and understands the game very well. Tonight it was fun to see him go against Boban, fellow Serb, much bigger and stronger but also 8 years older. They both played really well; Boban is better now but Jokic showed that he's going to be very good with a bit of experience.

Up-And-Coming wrote:He's looking very impressive. Looked good when the Laker's played him too. The Nuggets may have dropped the ball on the Mudiay pick but they made up for it by drafting Nikola Jokic. Only thing is I don't see how he can co-exist with Nurkic, Lauvergne, Faried, etc. The Nuggets have a plethora of front court talent, but I think there strengths overlap. They should trade at least one of them and get a quality guard/point guard in return.

Mudiay was expected to be a project, and really he has shown flashes, and with reports that he is smart and works very hard, I think he still has a chance to be a very good if not great PG.

You are correct though that the Nuggets are going to have to make a trade, with Nurkic having a mid range game, and Joffrey and Nikola having 3 point range they can all play together. Although their strengths are far from the same, Jokic has a very good back to the basket post game and high BBIQ but is limited in strength and not a great defender, Lauvergne has a nice outside shot and is a solid defender but mostly gets by on outworking people, Nurkic is a physical beast that is the best defender of the 4 and does the dirty work, and FAried is a very good finisher with good hands and a great offensive rebounder. They will have a minute crunch trying to get all 4 of them minutes, especially when Malone likes to play small with Gallo at the 4 sometimes.

As for Jokic, over the summer I kept hearing how if he was in this draft he would have been a lotto pick and while you hope it is true you never really know. He has been everything he was hyped to be and should be a very good if not great player for years to come.

Honestly I've never even seen him play, I'll have to check him out.

Up-And-Coming wrote:He's looking very impressive. Looked good when the Laker's played him too. The Nuggets may have dropped the ball on the Mudiay pick but they made up for it by drafting Nikola Jokic. Only thing is I don't see how he can co-exist with Nurkic, Lauvergne, Faried, etc. The Nuggets have a plethora of front court talent, but I think there strengths overlap. They should trade at least one of them and get a quality guard/point guard in return.

Well once Nurkic gets back into playing games relative to his level last season, I expect Coach Malone to play Nurkic, Lauvergne and Jokic to be main 3 bigs in the rotation. What will come as a surprise to many people is Faried completely falling out of the rotation. I think Arthur will end up being the 4th big in the rotation. But all three bigs bring different skills to the table. Nurkic is the best rim protector and still has the highest ceiling, Jokic brings the most versatile skill set offensively but the poorest athlete, Lauvergne mainly does the dirty work while being the best athlete and he was 55th overall pick in 2013.

As for Nikola Jokic, he was a player who entered the draft earlier than he should have. A great steal at 40-41 by Connelly. Some experts had him as a late lottery pick had he entered the 2015 draft. He still needs to improve his conditioning a lot.