Nikola Jokic won the NBA MVP award this past week and rightfully so. He was one of the most dominant players in the league this season and he is the big reason why the Denver Nuggets were able to get the third seed in the Western Conference despite suffering from numerous injuries. Unfortunately, without Jamal Murray in the lineup, Jokic has been forced to carry his team and it hasn’t always been pretty. Case in point, the Nuggets are down 2-0 to the Phoenix Suns and last night, his team lost by 25.
While Jokic led the team in virtually every statistical category, he was still subjected to a ton of slander, particularly from Charles Barkley who felt like his effort was sub-par, especially coming from a recently-crowned MVP.
“This game reminded me of the Milwaukee Bucks game the other night where they were like ‘we just quit, this game is over, we’re not going to compete,’” Barkley said. “When you get a day off in between [games], after you get your butt kicked in Game 1, you get MVP the day before, and then you come out and don’t give any effort? That team tonight, they packed it in.”
Moving forward, the series will go back to Denver where the Nuggets will need to get a win before the series becomes completely out of reach. They can’t afford to go down 3-0 and if they want to crawl back into the series, Jokic will need to have an all-time great performance come Friday.
