What is jokic doing on the defensive end?
Its wild how these nerds/cacs completely ignore one side of the floor when it comes to guys like Nash,dirk,jokic,luka and Curry.
Pretty good defensive rebounding and because of his ability to handle the ball this can translate into easy scoring opportunities off misses or at least get the team into its offense pretty quickly
Can get you a steal and a block here and there, sometimes in clutch situations
Frustrates me because he doesn’t regularly contest shots that are contestable which seems to be an effort issue—if you have a big who can face up, the mid-range is consistently available
Generally is just poor around rim protection so can be vulnerable to teams that penetrate and attack the rim
Lateral movement isn’t very good and sometimes his positioning is pretty shoddy too which is unfortunate because he has a big body and can use to his advantage
On occasion, I’ve seen him make the effort to get over screens but I think he’s vulnerable in pick and roll situations as well
Excels at kicking the ball (I’m not kidding) which can be disruptive to the offensive flow of the other team
Make no mistake about it, he’s not a great defender but he has the ability to make smart plays on defense
Key for him is not to be a complete sieve and to defend without fouling because he would do way more harm being more aggressive and fouling and ending up on the bench for long periods of time because we all know the non-Jokic minutes can get ugly for the Nuggets
I also sometimes think he doesn’t make as great an effort on defense to conserve energy on the other side where he excels so maybe it’s a team strategy around him not trying to do too much defensively
Overall, I think his deficiencies on defense are overstated and ignore the transcendental playmaker and overall force he is which allows him to impact winning and to be among the greats of today’s game
