30-20-20.

On Nikola Jokic's historic night.

Photo by Francisco Ghisletti on Unsplash

I kept the box score.

I never keep the box scores. I’m grateful to the Nuggets and their staff for providing printed copies (despite the carbon footprint) after the games so we can refer to them when asking the players questions. But I’ve never kept one.

This one I kept.

I’m going to frame it, despite the fact that it isn’t autographed because I would never ask a player to sign anything for me.

But that doesn’t matter to me. I know I was there. I know I saw an NBA player do something no one had ever done. I was there. In the building, hearing the crowd, asking questions of the players, being in the locker room.

I want to be able to look at this sheet of paper with little numbers and figures on it, and remember that I got to see the first 30-20-20 game in NBA history.

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“I can’t describe him, so don’t ask me to.” -Michael Malone

I have a hard time trying to contextualize Jokic, and I think about it all the time. There are games that stand out, but I’ve seen so many possessions, so many amazing passes, so many ridiculous performances that they all blend together.

Was last night the greatest game I’ve seen Jokic play? Not top five, honestly, and top ten would be a stretch. I’ve seen him dominate games from start to finish with 18 points and 12 assists. I’ve seen him drop 50 in one and have 17 assists in another.

I’ve seen him put 30-point triple-doubles down in the Finals. How do I possibly start to rank these? The amazing thing for all of Jokic’s numbers is that I’ve learned that the numbers don’t actually often tell me how much he controlled the game. They are the product of sequences that he is always solving.

But there’s something to the sheer production. It took me a while to learn/decide that the NBA is largely built of basic elements and games are built of:

production X impact X chemistry X luck/variance

Without those, you’re going to have a hard time. You can be the kind of player that makes all the right plays and plays winning basketball, but someone has to score the points, rebound the misses, throw the passes, and shoot the ball.

And Jokic did all of it on Friday night. He made all the shots, threw all the passes, played all the defense, and made all the plays.

He had a triple-double early in the third. And then another triple-double after that.

"It's just so insane that he's able to do it, like, quietly. Because it's like a quiet 30-20-20. He's nuts, dude. He's insane. Playing next to him is special." - Aaron Gordon¹

The NBA has so much ego in it.

Christian Braun is a national champion who has won at every level Aaron Gordon was a NBA team’s best player in Orlando. Jamal Murray was a Kentucky recruit and has multiple 50-point playoff games and a 30-point triple-double. These are all high level guys and with that comes so much ego.

Yet all of them just constantly defer credit to Jokic. I’ve tried at multiple points to get them to take credit for their contributions to the Nugget’s success because I genuinely believe they deserve it. Not just for how well they’ve played but sacrificing to play around Jokic and get the best out of him as he gets the best out of them.

And all of them just stand in awe of Jokic. They are always torn between “This is just who he is and what he does” and “I can’t believe what I watch every night.” It’s like getting to watch Jurrassic Park for the first time every night.

And he returns that same deference, constantly talking about how his teammates do things that help. He made mention last night — as he has several times — that when his teammates make a lot of shots, he has a lot of assists. One the one hand, if they made more, he’d have more assists, but on the other, their shot-making ability makes him look good.

It’s a synergy, a symphony, and Jokic is both the melody beneath it and the conductor.

"That is just who he is; he plays the right way, makes the right play every single time down the court. And what he did today was ridiculous. It seems like he does it every night. It was just another game for him, and he is one of the best players of all time. It is a pleasure to get to play with him every night." - Christian Braun on Jokic trusting him with what would have been the game-winner.

Imagine most players when having a night like that and how many would take the final shot vs. passing to a third-year late first-round role player who is a good-not-great shooter. Jokic was even defensive of Christian after the game, saying that he thinks he’s a good shooter and that he knows when to shoot and when not to.

It is such a better brand of basketball than we had in the mid-00’s, which would have seen him dribble-dribble-dribble and take a contested pull-up as a guard. For all the complaints about the modern NBA, more players want to make the right play than ever, and Jokic is among those influencing the next generation to do the same.

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"I will lie, I will lie definitely and they will not look it up. I will lie probably. I will say they didn’t follow the stats, I had more." - Nikola Jokic on what he will tell his grandkids about this game

The play that will actually stay with me is this shot:

That’s such an old school shot. It’s the kind of shot my dad would make when I was learning how to play and he would kill me at H-O-R-S-E. It’s a classic move, different from Eurosteps (which I love) and crossover-stepbacks (which I love) and logo-hoist threes (which I hate).

There’s something timeless about this shot. It feels like it not only exists now in this modern, hyper-efficient NBA but spans back to Russell and Wilt, Mikan and Kareem, Magic and Hakeem, Yao and Dwight.

Jokic is hypermodern in his use of spacing and finding the most efficient pathways, and he is also iconic in a classical sense. His game has moved beyond this era to become one that defines this era in some ways.

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So I kept the box score. If my daughter grows up and says “Did you know Jokic had a 30-20-20 one time? Were you there?” I want to show her the box score with Nuggets PR handed me. I can say “Yeah, I was in the building for that, here’s the box they gave me.²”

For whatever reason, on Friday I kept thinking of the old LeBron marketing campaign “We Are All Witnesses.” And while I think LeBron is still the best emodiment of that, in some ways those of us whose local teams have these all-time greats get to experience that.

Whether it’s Steph or KD or Wembanyama or whoever is next, the opportunity to not only watch but chronicle these amazing players who transcend the constant feeling of being trapped in this particular social media moment of time and remind of of the timeless nature of the game are blessed.

We are the lucky ones.

We’re all the lucky ones.

1. Via Bennett Durando of the Denver Post

2. I will leave out the part about getting there at halftime because I-25 South is a wretched journey through the depths of hell, and I wish it nothing but the worst.