Nikola Jokic may just have himself a future as a soccer player.
Jokic and the Denver Nuggets evened up their second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves at two games apiece with a 115-107 victory in Sunday’s Game 4 in Minnesota. After leading by as many as 18 at one point, the Nuggets held off to a late comeback effort by the Timberwolves to hang on for the win.
After the game, a video from the “Hot Hand Theory” podcast went viral pointing out some shrewd time-wasting tactics that Jokic engaged in during the game. Following multiple made baskets by the surging Timberwolves in the fourth quarter, Jokic cleverly bled some clock by intentionally letting the ball bounce or by delaying in giving the ball back to the referee so that the five-second inbounds timer would not begin yet.
The video noted that Jokic successfully wasted nearly a minute of game clock during the fourth quarter through his tactics. Take a look below.
No player in the NBA is as effective or blatant in stalling with a lead than Nikola Jokic. He does this by delaying the refs 5-second count (fumbling the ball or passing it to the ref) and then rolling it to his teammate. Tonight he wasted almost a minute of game clock in the 4Q. pic.twitter.com/ToKwHZooC1
— Hot Hand Theory (@HotHandTheory) May 13, 2024
Of course, Jokic is far from the first or the only NBA player to use these kinds of methods to fritter away the clock. But with Minnesota cutting the lead down to six points (two possessions) late in the fourth quarter, Jokic’s ploy appears to have worked to perfection.
The strategy does come with some obvious limitations though. It only works when a team is nursing a lead, so Jokic and the Nuggets still need to take care of business otherwise for it to come into play. But this is yet another reason why the newly-minted three-time MVP Jokic is one of the most clever players in the league right now.
