Horror History Repeats: Jokic's Nightmarish Misses Against Minnesota Shock Denver Again

In a Denver loss that put the team in a significant deficit, Jokic recorded 19 missed field goals, shooting a modest 7-of-26 from the field.

This statistic isn't just an isolated incident on one bad night; it's an echo of a nightmare the Nuggets' center experienced at the same venue three years prior. With these 19 unsuccessful attempts, Nikola Jokic now holds two of the worst shooting performances by a center in NBA playoff history in the 21st century.

At the top of that infamous list still stands his 21 misses from 2023, also against the Timberwolves, suggesting that the "Wolves" have found a formula to cloud the vision of a man who typically sees everything on the court.

Rudy Gobert and Minnesota's defensive wall have achieved what few others can: they've forced the three-time MVP to work for every point to such an extent that his efficiency completely collapsed. Although he finished the game with 27 points and 15 rebounds, a mere 27% shooting percentage clearly illustrates how difficult it was for Denver to find their rhythm. When the best player on the planet enters such a shooting slump, the entire team usually suffers, which was evident in the inability of the rest of the squad to compensate for the lack of Nikola's usual magic.

This series is slowly escalating into a psychological battle. The fact that both of Jokic's "historic" shooting slumps have come against the same rival within a few years is no coincidence.

Minnesota has built an identity on physical strength and aggressiveness that clearly exhausts the Serbian center, forcing him into difficult shots he typically wouldn't take.

Denver now faces the tough task of finding a way to alleviate the pressure on their leader before the series irrevocably slips in favor of an opponent who, it seems, has learned how to make a basketball genius look like an ordinary mortal.