Will Jokic get exposed these playoffs, again?

[AleksandarN]

The heat on Jokic will only increase with every non-title season.

Go get em Joker.

Not sure he has the guards to pull it off but if they fail they should get Mitchell or some other elite closer

Honestly, if he's as good as the hardware (Back to back MVP) indicates and advanced stat nerds say he is, than he has more than enough to carry the Nuggets to the Finals. Lebron carried JR Smith and a bunch of bums out of the East in 2018. As well as some other bums back in the late 00's.

Come on James is the second best player of all time No one has every said Jokic was anywhere close to James. And 2018 cavs had way more depth than the Nuggets last year. Now if Jokic doesn't reach a finals with team then we can talk.

[NCHeels2008]

Which playoffs was Jokic "exposed" in?

[NO-KG-AI]

The heat on Jokic will only increase with every non-title season.

Go get em Joker.

Not sure he has the guards to pull it off but if they fail they should get Mitchell or some other elite closer

Honestly, if he's as good as the hardware (Back to back MVP) indicates and advanced stat nerds say he is, than he has more than enough to carry the Nuggets to the Finals. Lebron carried JR Smith and a bunch of bums out of the East in 2018. As well as some other bums back in the late 00's.

And if he does that, the "ringzz" nerds will come out to say that it doesn't matter if he doesn't win a title.

[syrus3]

What title did Lebron win without stars next to him?

[dhsilv2]

Where is the bias here? Sounds like you cannot handle when your guy gets justified criticism. Sorry for that.

Anytime a thread is made based on a game that just happened, that extrapolates from the singular game ANYTHING. It's from a clearly biased point of view.

Not really. Because I stated a question in the OP.

And given how Jokic or Embiid have never accomplished anything in the playoffs, its fair to ask these questions and speculate. This is basketball. Its what we do. I have no horse in either the Philly or Denver race. So nope. Not biased.

It might be a fair question, but it the timing makes it impossible to take it seriously or not question your bias. Given that there is really no question that Jokic is better than Embiid, it's even more odd. Throw on that the game that just happened came in the middle of a series of too many games in too many nights for the nuggets where Jokic was taking games off due to injuries. If that game was in any way used to base ANY opinion on, it's not one worth any serious discussion.

[Kobe187]

The D in the playoffs gets ramped way up, his teammates won’t be left open for feeds from him, he needs to punish the defender in the post and score to draw a convincing double team opening up the offence, last season he got shut down by undersized Draymond Green.

[MrBigShot]

The D in the playoffs gets ramped way up, his teammates won’t be left open for feeds from him, he needs to punish the defender in the post and score to draw a convincing double team opening up the offence, last season he got shut down by undersized Draymond Green.

Jokic getting "shut down" = 31/13/6 on 64 TS%

[Lala870]

Will Jokic get exposed? Probably not. Will the Nuggets as a team? They always do because they are a soft bunch

[TheLand13]

Embiid has had multiple teams around him. People act like he was playing with the Ignite before this season.

That 18-19 roster was absolutely stacked.

Can’t believe I’m actually about to defend Embiid, but…

Both Harris and Butler were brought on to that team mid way through the season. While stacked with talent, they never really had time to build any chemistry and develop their own system. Because they were so talented, they were able to take a stacked Raptors team to seven games. But that team tends to get overrated.

[eyeatoma]

Jokic has no flaws on offense, but struggles like most big men do switching onto guards. He is rightfully the league MVP, what is there to expose? That he, like every player in NBA history, is not perfect?

I love how easy it is to forgive Jokic, but the moment Embiid has any problems, there's a giant microscope focusing in on him. As said before, the leash for Jokic is ridiculously long.

[eyeatoma]

When was Jokic exposed?

Never , he got not enough talent around him , not exactly his fault

LOL, neither has Embiid, except for this and last year.

[eyeatoma]

ElGee and his thoughts on the game

Watch on YouTube

And last year when Boston beat Denver, Grant Williams crowned himself Batman after slowing down Joker. Fast forward to this year and Jokic ate him alive when they faced off.

The great players make adjustments. It’s as simple as that.

I think the interesting strategy highlighted in this video is: you don't want your best help defender trapped guarding man-to-man.

Tons of fans want the head-to-head matchup, and will even criticize players for not guarding the best opposing player. While this sometimes makes sense for perimeter players, when we're talking about a rim-protecting center, their defensive responsibilities are bigger than guarding 1 guy. Everytime Embiid guard's Joker, there's no rim protector to stop the cutters who are weaponized by Joker's passing. It's easy offense all day and nothing Joel can do about it. But since the Sixers have a capably strong matchup defender in Tucker, they finally figured out that it's way smarter to have Embiid focus on the more important task of shutting down team offense by protecting the whole paint.

People always loved to criticize Gobert in this way. Despite his perimeter defense being a lot more solid than most people think, Utah's defense would fall apart if you could take Gobert out of the paint. People made the false conclusion that this had something to do with Gobert's perimeter defense, but the real reason was that whenever Gobert is on the perimeter, he's not guarding the paint, and Utah didn't have a secondary source of paint protection.

Rim protecting bigs are like goalies in hockey or soccer. If they're not near the net, you're at a disadvantage. You want to keep your rim protector protecting the rim as much as possible and strategically avoid offensive traps to remove that player from the paint.

Anyways, great move by Doc Rivers, and admirable effort by PJ Tucker (arguably the best matchup defender of this generation).

Well said, but you're spittin the truth. Not something that is taken well on here at times.

[BloodNinja]

When was Jokic exposed?

Never , he got not enough talent around him , not exactly his fault

LOL, neither has Embiid, except for this and last year.

And when he had Jimmy

[eyeatoma]

Never , he got not enough talent around him , not exactly his fault

LOL, neither has Embiid, except for this and last year.

And when he had Jimmy

When he had Jimmy, we had Ben in a weird situation where he was wanting the ball during the playoffs, and Brett Brown wanted Jimmy to have the ball. Made Jimmy very uncomfortable. We also had Tobias who had just come in. There were a lot of new parts, and roles were still being ironed out. The team literally was put together at the trade deadline. Was it the best on paper apart from this year's? Yes, but IMO this year's team has way better chemistry, even though Jimmy and Jo were bros.

[Mickey8]

Dumb excuses its always Ben Simmons and not Embiid. Jimmy Butler left the Philly because of Embbids being week in the play off's. Embiid wont have an excuse to hide behind Simmons this season play off's, I guess they will make up injury excuses again.

[Optms]

Dumb excuses its always Ben Simmons and not Embiid. Jimmy Butler left the Philly because of Embbids being week in the play off's. Embiid wont have an excuse to hide behind Simmons this season play off's, I guess they will make up injury excuses again.

Blatant lies.

Butler left because Philly chose to pay Tobias Harris, even though Butler wanted to stay and loved playing with Embiid. Simmons is a role player at this point who left because the city held him accountable for being a mental midget. Harden was injured last year when Philly lost. Its the same excuse the Jokic crowd uses when they defend Jokic.

[eyeatoma]

Dumb excuses its always Ben Simmons and not Embiid. Jimmy Butler left the Philly because of Embbids being week in the play off's. Embiid wont have an excuse to hide behind Simmons this season play off's, I guess they will make up injury excuses again.

You're going to say that with a straight face after seeing Ben Simmons shrivel up this season?

[Richard Miller]

Jokic has no flaws on offense, but struggles like most big men do switching onto guards. He is rightfully the league MVP, what is there to expose? That he, like every player in NBA history, is not perfect?

As said before, the leash for Jokic is ridiculously long.

Maybe because he earned it? Played top 5 (or thereabouts) most minutes in the league last several years, only lost in the first round once (to the champions), doesn't whinge or complain 'I should've been this I should've been that', actually stays out of media altogether.

[Cubbies2120]

Jokic has no flaws on offense, but struggles like most big men do switching onto guards. He is rightfully the league MVP, what is there to expose? That he, like every player in NBA history, is not perfect?

I love how easy it is to forgive Jokic, but the moment Embiid has any problems, there's a giant microscope focusing in on him. As said before, the leash for Jokic is ridiculously long.

There are no excuses this year - if the Nuggets are healthy, the result has no asterisk. They've looked great this year when everyone is playing.

[Cubbies2120]

Harden was injured last year when Philly lost. Its the same excuse the Jokic crowd uses when they defend Jokic.

An injured Harden in the playoffs was still better than Jokic's teammates...

Stop the cap, he was healthy enough to play and put up 19/9/6, better than DNP's...

They. Are. Not. The. Same.