Nikola Jokic is the best player in the NBA and we have our national writer at the Athletic Fred Katz to discuss some nuances in his approach and game. Dave DuFour and Zena Keita discuss Fred’s article on Nikola Jokic and what other players in the NBA are saying about his game. In part 2 Fred sticks around and the crew discusses their favorite Playoff matchups including Nuggets/Clippers, Wolves/Lakers and the return of Damian Lillard.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Zena Keita and Fred KatzExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moodyhttps://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6276862/2025/04/16/nikola-jokic-christian-braun-mentorship-nba-mvp-denver-nuggets/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What is the Jokic bump and why is it important?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, it's the playoffs. Fred Katz is here to talk about the Jokic bump, and we're going to break down some of the pivotal series as we march toward the finals. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, guys. How's it going?
Good morning. It's going well. We're taking a little break before the playoffs start. Shout out to the play-ins being... I love this pace.
Fred Katz is here right off the jump. Fred, this is about as light of a schedule as you've had all year, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, nothing. It's not like I've had features that I've been working on forever coming out all week. It's not like I'm working on, you know, post-mortem stuff for 17 teams whose seasons are over and preparing for the playoffs coming up and everything else. None of that is happening. So I'm doing great.
Fred is in it's you've you've been added to the list of guys that you just don't want to have writing about your team right as the season ends. I mean, you know, if Fred is writing about your team right now, except for the Knicks, it's probably not great. Although you did write about Nikola Jokic and the Jokic bump, the Jokic effect. And the way that this guy elevates his teammates.
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Chapter 2: How does Nikola Jokic elevate his teammates?
Now, look, you also covered John Wall, who was a guy that elevated his teammates quite a bit. Totally different styles, right? John Wall would attack the basket and he'd find these shooters in the corner. Man, how do you wrap your head around a guy like Jokic that finds shooters in places where they normally don't stand and where usually guys can't make passes to?
yeah to me so i wrote i wrote this story and it kind of started i i don't like going into a story with an idea of this is exactly what i'm writing about no matter what because i find if if you if you have specific goals going into a story before you know everything then you end up getting tunnel vision and ironically like you end up not being you should treat a story like nicola jokic treats a basketball game
No tunnel vision. Don't lock in on one spot. Just know you got the whole court to work with. So I go in and I'm like, I'm just going to talk to people about things I think are interesting and people are going to explain things to me and I'm going to learn things. And then a story is going to start to form. And you go in with an idea of kind of what you're thinking.
And originally what I was thinking was, hey, Christian Brown is way better this year. I would like to write something about how Christian Brown has been way better this year and how this happened. Christian Brown was nice enough to talk to me for a very long time. I mean, he gave me a ton of time and was extremely open in our interview.
I always appreciate it when guys who I cover can be so honest and available and it's like, that's why you do the job. It was really cool. We had a great conversation. And props to him for being kind enough to do that. And he just kept saying to me, like, I'm not that improved, man. Like, I'm not that improved. And I think he's a very modest guy.
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Chapter 3: What insights did Christian Brown share about Jokic?
And so I think the number one place where that comes from was him being a very humble person. I also think he wasn't lying. Like, I don't think he thought he was lying at least because what he kept saying was he was like, you know, the coaching staff has done an amazing job with me. And then he was like, this is Nicola. Look at what Nicola does with everybody.
And we dove into, okay, so how does Nicola... help you? Obviously he's going to find you on all these cuts and do all this stuff, but how does he help you? And we start talking about the off the court stuff and he tells me a story about how when he was a rookie, they do these pre-practice stretches and he wasn't taking stretching seriously enough.
So Jokic, after a little while of telling him to take it more seriously, goes over, takes his stretching mat and plops it next to him and is like, you are stretching next to me, bud. And they still stretch next to each other every day and all these little things. And then it starts to hit me. Like I covered Isaiah Hartenstein when he was with the Knicks.
And Hartenstein used to tell me that he thinks Jokic is just a total genius. And so he would just, just... just follow around Jokic. And I think even Isaiah was just like, I think I probably annoyed him at different points and would just ask him basketball questions to pick his brain.
And he would tell me that Jokic taught him that passing is about passing with your eyes, certain ways to manipulate the defense with your eyes. And I always thought that was such a fascinating example. And I was like, there's got to be more examples of Jokic like teaching. We all know he's a basketball genius. You don't have to talk to him to know he's a basketball genius.
We all know he's a basketball genius. And I was like, there have got to be other examples of guys who have played with Jokic who have learned this ridiculously nuanced stuff that they never would have otherwise thought of. And so I started calling around the teammates and people who I knew already, people whose contact information I was able to get and asking him those questions.
And every teammate, current or former, that I spoke to of Jokic was like, Oh, yeah, you're on the nose. That's 100% true. And he's got this reputation of being a guy who keeps to himself and, you know, likes his horses and he wins the title and he just wants to get home to Serbia as quickly as possible. And every single person who I spoke to who's played with him was like, That's not it.
That's like the public persona. He doesn't like being front facing. He doesn't like talking about himself. It makes him uncomfortable. He's too humble. He's too modest with that. But like this dude cares so much about basketball. And here are all of these very specific, tangible examples of how much he cares about
why he cares, how it comes through, and how he's taught me about really specific parts of the game that I otherwise never would have known about. And that's kind of what the story became about. And it was really like a dive into Jokic's mind through other people.
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Chapter 4: How do the Nuggets match up against the Clippers?
And I think Christian Brown has the exact same mentality as well, where he's like, well, this guy is on another planet. So I'm just going to copy everything he does. And look at what's happened to Christian Brown. Yeah. Dude's a better player than he's ever been.
Hardenstein. I mean, the Jokic bump is something that has carried guys to better careers. I mean, we're not long off from the Jokic big man camp, in my opinion. You know, if you're like, if you're a, struggling rotation level big, and you're a free agent, why not go play with Jokic for a season and see what you can pick up? Guys, go and read that story. It's over at The Athletic.
We'll link it in the show description. And hang on. After the break, Fred's going to hang out, and we're going to talk about some of these big playoff series, starting with whether the Nuggets can beat the Clippers.
Hallo, etwas Glück to go bitte.
Gerne, zum Rubbeln oder Aufreißen.
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Chapter 5: What makes Ty Lue an exceptional playoff coach?
Hauptsache schnell, ich kann mein Glück kaum erwarten. Die Lose von Lotto Bayern, zum Rubbeln oder Aufreißen. Glück to go, der schnelle Weg zum Glück. Lotto Bayern, nimm dein Glück in die Hand, nur in deiner Lotto-Annahmestelle.
Spielteilnahme ab 18, Glücksspiel kann süchtig machen. Infos unter bzga.de.
The playoffs are kicking off this weekend. I thought we could kick around the more competitive series. I want to get your thoughts. Fred, I want to start with you. We might as well start with the Nuggets and Clippers. Just talked about Jokic and how good he is. The Clippers have been awesome. The last six weeks of the season, best offense, best defense.
Avicii Zubac, Defense Player of the Year candidate, most improved candidate. Kawhi Leonard looking like Kawhi Leonard. How do you see this series shaking out?
I think this is just going to be an absolutely fabulous series. I am so curious to see how the Clippers go about defending Nikola Jokic. And ultimately, I think I am picking the Clippers in this one just because I don't know if there's a better coach or I mean, Eric Spolstra is unbelievable. I don't know if there is a better playoff coach than Ty Lue. The guy is so brilliant game to game.
There might not be a better regular season coach than Ty Lue either.
Adjustment-wise, I put him at the top of the list.
I mean, he is just so unbelievably brilliant in terms of getting the most out of everybody. And then you got David Adelman on the other side, who might be amazing. I just don't know. We have no idea. He's coached for a week, and he's got coaching in his blood, but he's coached for a week, and we just don't know.
And the Clippers, as constructed, with Kawhi playing the best ball he's played all season, the Clippers, as constructed... are just a monster defensively. They really are. Evita Zubats has had one of the best defensive seasons in the NBA, certainly his best defensive season ever. And I put him on my second team all defense. I thought he was great this year. I had him second for MIP.
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Chapter 6: What defensive strategies can the Clippers use against Jokic?
Chapter 7: How do NBA players view film study and preparation?
There might not be a better regular season coach than Ty Lue either.
Adjustment-wise, I put him at the top of the list.
I mean, he is just so unbelievably brilliant in terms of getting the most out of everybody. And then you got David Adelman on the other side, who might be amazing. I just don't know. We have no idea. He's coached for a week, and he's got coaching in his blood, but he's coached for a week, and we just don't know.
And the Clippers, as constructed, with Kawhi playing the best ball he's played all season, the Clippers, as constructed... are just a monster defensively. They really are. Evita Zubats has had one of the best defensive seasons in the NBA, certainly his best defensive season ever. And I put him on my second team all defense. I thought he was great this year. I had him second for MIP.
You got Chris Dunn, who we talked ball perimeter defense last week on the pod. And you guys were like, how do you not have Chris Dunn? And it's only because he wasn't eligible for awards. That's right.
chris dunn is a phenomenal guy to be able to throw on jamal murray and they can create these really creative ways of guarding yokich too you know we've seen teams have success with yokich not necessarily putting their number one best big man defender on yokich you know minnesota had a lot of success against denver where they go okay last year they put cat on yokich they have rudy gobert
kind of guarding away from yokich and you have gobert shading over into the lane so when yokich spins into the lane you have gobert there to disrupt i think they can do stuff like that with zoo bots you could try kawaii i think we're gonna get kawaii on yokich i think we're gonna see harden on yokich i mean xena like they've got all these long wings i'm just gonna say my biggest thing xena though i don't know how the nuggets are going to guard kawaii and guard james hart
Yeah, the biggest thing that I'm looking at the Clippers is that they just have bodies. They have consistent bodies that you can come off the bench and just throw at folks. And all of them are long and athletic. Whereas Denver is limited in their ability to, one, just throw bodies at you. And then also to find additional offense when their defense isn't working.
Yeah, I really think that it's going to be a game of runs between these two teams. Particularly led on the Denver side by Jokic, of course. But Jamal Murray is going to have to lock in. And not only offensively working with Jokic, but he's going to have to play some serious defense. And we know he can. We know he's capable.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of the playoffs for these teams?
And now it's a matter for Denver to be like, all right, we we know we can be monstrous in the paint. We know that, you know, we can pick and roll you to death. We have Jokic. That's, you know, a game changer always. But what's going to happen on the other side for them defensively?
I don't know what what Denver is going to be able to throw out. Sounds like we're all kind of on the Clippers bandwagon there. Yeah. I just don't know if the Nuggets have enough talent. What about the other Big West series?
Can I make one caveat really quickly, Dave?
Yeah.
Really quick caveat. Yeah, absolutely. Denver has the best player in the world. In the world. And it's not particularly close. And if the best player in the world plays at his A-plus game, then it might not matter. Just all the stuff we just discussed might matter not at all.
Throw it out the window. I will say this, though. Kawhi Leonard –
I was just going to say that too.
Maybe good enough right now that he is the best player in this year. And I'm not saying he's a better player than Jokic, but in this series, he could be. Especially because the Nuggets just struggle defensively. What about Lakers-Wolves? Zena, I feel like this is a big time matchup, obviously. But the Wolves just didn't want to see Luka after what he did to him last year.
And it's kind of perfect that they've lined up this way. How are you looking at the Lakers and Wolves?
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