By Antonis Stroggylakis / info@eurohoops.net
If there’s one thing that caught even more spotlight than the fact that Nikola Jokic scored twice as many points (24 – 12) as his opponents in the first quarter of the Denver Nuggets – New York Knicks game, that’s the number of dunks the Joker had in the period.
Not one, nor two but four. That’s how many times Jokic hammered it home to tie his career-high for dunks even before the expiration of the first 12 minutes.
“I don’t know… It was tiger dunks. You know what’s a tiger dunk. Almost,” Jokic said after the 113 – 97 win over the Knicks while making claws with his hands. He probably joked that his fingers barely made it past the rim, even though that wasn’t the case with some of his jams. “Facu [Campazzo] found me for one on the baseline… the rest I don’t even remember. Just attacking the rim, being aggressive. It’s a good thing.”
This season has been an absolute dunkfest for Jokic, at least in comparison with the previous years. According to Basketball Reference, the Serbian big man has already dunked the ball 45 times in 2020-21 which is a new personal record and three times the number of slams he had in the previous season.
Jokic’s four dunks vs. the Knicks weren’t just “catch-and-throw-down” under the rim or putbacks that wouldn’t require any major movement. In one of them, he slipped past Reggie Bullock when he saw the open lane to drive to the basket before he dunked the ball. He delivered another after catching an excellent pass by Facu Campazzo while running the floor in transition.
These dunks made just eight out of the 24 points Jokic dropped in the first quarter, a phenomenal output even for his usual extremely dominant standards.
“The team was finding me, I made shots. It just happened, you know,” Jokic said on his performance in the first quarter.