Which player is actually ‘best’ at guarding Nikola Jokic
For whatever reason before the WCF in 2023, there was a conception that Anthony Davis does very well against Nikola Jokic however that narrative has completely flipped.
I’ve seen Nurkic, Ayton, Draymond and Gobert mentioned before but the facts (stats) seem untrue.
While there might not be a Jokic stopper, is there an actual player that defends Jokic well to the point of keeping him to or below his averages?
Marc gasol would’ve been a great matchup for him - Tall, strong, and an extremely smart defender. I think he’s the best guy for the job in recent history
i would have loved to see sheed/big ben and pre injury kg/perk take this task too.
AD is a good defender for this current league but Jokic is kind of old school in terms of using his body. Weve seen hes been bodied pretty well by Dwight before jokic’s MVP seasons, i just want to see what it would be like to have bruisers try to take him
I think Marc would get balled on too. Jokic would take him to the 3 point line and Marc isn’t going out to there.
Jokic as unathletic as he is beats guys off the dribble every game off that pump fake. It’s really no way to stop him 1 on 1. He does everything at a high level.
I think he played a couple good defensive games on him back in the day when he was motivated (not always the case towards the end in Memphis)
This is a top quality take right here. No way to be proved right or wrong.
Prime Muggsy would have destroyed Joker. Prove me wrong.
Gasol and pre Prime Jokic did very much play against each other.
Could compare how Marc did compared to his peers
I mean they had a larger sample than someone like WCJ has.
They played 15 times overall, 12 times since 2017.
Excluding the one game where he played only 10 minutes he averaged 18.3/10/5.3/1.7/0.4 on 47/23/84 shooting splits in 11 games since 2017.
Since 2021 he averaged 22.7/11.3/7/1/0.7 and 2.7 turnovers on 42.6/22/88 shooting splits.
Aka not good relative to his normal production.
100%, he’d just jab Joker in the groin and that’s that
Jump up to headbutt Jokic in the groin like a soccer player.