Jokic Presents Challenges for Small-Ball Thunder Lineups
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Oklahoma City could be in trouble on Saturday.
The Thunder return to the court for their second game of the regular season, this time on the road in Denver against the Nuggets. Playing the Nuggets comes with one of the biggest challenges of any team in the league, Nikola Jokic.
Jokic, the back-to-back MVP of the league, presents a bigger challenge to OKC than he does to many other NBA teams. The Thunder don’t have a true NBA center to match up with the dominant presence of Jokic, which means the Thunder will turn toward a committee of big men to attempt to shut down Jokic.
He dominated in the Nuggets loss to the Suns in their first game of the season. He scored 27 points, grabbed four rebounds and dished six assists.
The Thunder started Kenrich Williams and Aleksej Pokusevski at the four and five respectively in their season opener, but could see more size fill into the starting five with Jokic on deck. Williams is 6-foot-6 and 210 pounds, desperately undersized to defend the 6-foot-11 284 pound Jokic. Pokusevski on the other hand is slightly more equipped to deal with Jokic’s abilities. Poku checks in at 7-foot tall, but only 190 pounds.
In the 2021-22 season Jeremiah Robinson-Earl drew the difficult challenge in most matchups with the Nuggets. JRE didn’t draw the start in OKC’s first game but could be called into a bigger role for his size. JRE checks in at 6-foot-8 and 242 pounds, which more closely suits the makeup of Jokic, but remains undersized.
Jokic faced OKC four times last season, the Thunder finished with a 2-2 record, but Jokic was a dominant force. He averaged 23 points, 13.25 rebounds and 5.25 assists per game. Jokic shot
Jokic' 36-for-62 from the field in those four games for an impressive 58%, which was on the nose for his season average.
The Serbian may be too strong for the Thunder to shut down, which is unlikely for even the best NBA teams to do, but the Thunder will have to turn to their lengthy big men like JRE or Pokusevski.
If the Thunder hope to hang with the Nuggets they will have to hang their hat on shutting down the players they can more easily match up with like the Nugget guards.
It won’t be easy, but OKC has the bodies to match up well with the Nuggets outside of Jokic.
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