NBA 2022-23: Nikola Jokic leads the NBA in the oddest defensive statistic – kicking the ball

On defence, though, Jokic tends to be as lumbering as he is graceful at the other end. Most opposing dribblers can edge past the twice-reigning MVP, and almost everyone in the NBA can outjump him. But in that same game against Phoenix, he showcased a skill that distinguishes him from any other defender in the league: He kicked the ball away from the Suns three times.

It wasn’t an aberration. Nobody in the recorded history of the sport has ever booted the basketball as often as Jokic. It is the solution “The Joker” has settled on to make up for his deficiencies: a kind of prank, a well-placed banana peel.

“We talk about deflections all the time,” Andrew Munson, a special assistant to Nuggets coach Michael Malone, said of Denver’s defensive philosophy. “Obviously, usually it’s with your hands. But it disrupts the offence, it takes them out of what they want to do. A kicked ball is just as good.”

By the numbers, Jokic is far and away the biggest such disrupter in the league. Over the regular season, he kicked the ball during an opponent’s possession 47 times — usually flinging a mammoth sneaker out into a passing lane when a guard is trying to slip the ball past Jokic’s hip to a big man. The mark was nearly twice the previous record since 2002-03, the earliest season for which Stats Perform has kicked-ball data. It’s more than all but 21 teams have ever collected across their whole rosters.

As a defensive strategy, the kick isn’t airtight; the violation stops play immediately, returns possession to the offence and, if the shot clock has dwindled, resets it to 14 seconds. But the task set before Jokic — who blocked 0.7 shots per game this season, just the 53rd-most in the league — isn’t to become a defensive force. He just has to do well enough to survive.

Stopping the pick-and-roll — basketball’s bedrock play, in which a big man screens to get a guard into open space and then charges to the rim for a pass — is both the hardest and most important task in modern defence, one that falls to the centres at the back line. The usual means of breaking one up, via bursts of lateral movement or high wire blocks at the rim, are mostly inaccessible to Jokic. Kicking the ball mid-pass short-circuits the play at the critical juncture, essentially forcing a team to start over and try to win the possession again.

“If the ball gets through, there, the roll is open,” said forward Bruce Brown, one of the Nuggets’ most reliable defenders. “It’s a dunk or a foul. So I think it’s great, what he does.”

According to Simon Gerszberg of ShotQuality, an analytics outfit that consults with college basketball and NBA teams, a completed pass to the “roll man” is “one of the most efficient possessions you can get.” It yields 1.28 expected points per possession, according to ShotQuality’s metrics. A Jokic kick turns the play back into an average possession, in which the Nuggets give up 1.14.

Jokic’s unprecedented foot-on-ball rates aren’t as widely admired as his playmaking. “It’s his way of saying, ‘I just don’t feel like playing defence, can we just reset?’” ESPN analyst Zach Lowe said on his podcast in March, adding, “I just feel like we shouldn’t allow guys to karate-kick the ball.”

Denver coaches, though, consider the technique an offshoot of the same creative impulses that drive Jokic’s offensive game. They see an art to it.

“He’s playing a cat-and-mouse game against the offensive player,” said Ognjen Stojakovic, a Nuggets assistant and Jokic’s fellow Serbian. If the kick isn’t quite the highlight fodder that a soaring block is, Stojakovic said, it is by no means easy to pull off, requiring a combination of reflex, balance and situational awareness — lest the gambit occur too late in the shot clock, swapping a last-second heave for a reset possession.

Back in Sombor, Stojakovic and Jokic have played soccer and “squares” — a kind of footy tennis, in which whoever can’t make a return loses. Jokic is able to slice and sweep the ball at will. “Any game with a ball, he’s very, very good,” Stojakovic said of Jokic. “His co-ordination — eye-hand, eye-foot — is unbelievable.”

Felipe Eichenberger, the Nuggets’ strength coach, seconded the scouting report. “He’s like Neymar, Messi, old Ronaldo — kind of a mix,” Eichenberger said, laughing. Turning sincere, he marvelled at Jokic’s acumen for anything strategic, his ability to detect and capitalise on subsurface opportunities. Eichenberger remembered playing a card game with some staffers while Jokic sat to the side for a few hands, watching to learn the rules. “Then he jumps in and starts winning,” Eichenberger said. “First time he’s ever played.”

Before this season, Jokic kicked the ball at a high rate but not a historic one. His previous personal best in a season was 10, in 2020-21. Munson says that, at the start of the year, a genius of the game surveyed his options and picked a plan.

“The guy’s just really smart, and he’s quick on his feet,” Munson said. “He’s seen every single way he can be attacked, and he knows when they like to throw that bounce pass.”

A sequence against the Golden State Warriors and Stephen Curry, in February, summed up the smarts. Curry dribbled around a screen and, finding himself face-to-face with the Serbian, started to pass in the direction of a teammate. But he stopped; a sneaker was in the way. Another attempt, another interruption. When Curry finally got annoyed and tried to arc the ball over the top, Jokic — his limbs splayed out action-figure akimbo — snatched it away, setting off a Denver fast break.

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As the series against the Suns continues, Jokic’s foot skills could face their toughest test yet. Chris Paul, the Phoenix point guard, may be the most accomplished pick-and-roll orchestrator of his generation — though his status is up in the air after he exited Monday’s game early with a groin injury. The targets of his passes are accomplished scorers: the future Hall-of-Fame forward Kevin Durant, the punishing centre Deandre Ayton.

Small things take on out-size importance in the postseason. Jokic’s passing and shotmaking direct the flow of games, establish their rhythm and supply their highlights. An inch of sneaker-tip, if it catches the right pass at the right moment, might decide one of them.

-The Wall Street Journal