His exploits earned him a spot on
the World Team for the Rising Stars
Challenge and from then on out there
was no looking back. He inished his
rookie season in the top 10 among
rookies for rebounding, scoring,
ield goal percentage and steals. Such
production earned him a spot on the
All-Rookie irst-team. It was just a taste
of things to come.
Season two saw development across
the board. His scoring skyrocketed
from 6.7 points to 16.7 points per game
and his efective ield goal percent-
age shot up a staggering 7% to 60.5%.
hat’s not even taking into account
his assist numbers which more than
doubled (2.4 to 4.9 per game). he then
21-year-old had begun to establish himself as one of the premier
ofensive big men in the league.
here were issues throughout the 2016-17 within the coach-
ing staf on how to integrate Jokic alongside Bosnian big man
Jusuf Nurkic. Nurkic was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers
which solved that dilemma and signalled a clear direction of
who was the foundational big man for
the franchise.
In another massive improvement
Jokic had 23 more double doubles than
in his rookie season and lodged the irst
six triple doubles of his career. hose
triple doubles ranked him fourth in the
league behind only Russell Westbrook,
James Harden and LeBron James. he
sophomore was the epitome of the
‘Unicorn’ phenomenon sweeping the
league’s big men.
While he had shown major strides in
his ofensive game, the defense was still
a work in progress. His lack of athletic
prowess was an obvious problem, but he
still was able to make an efect on that
end of the loor in other ways. His size
and strength were integral to making him an efective defender.
Per NBA.com, when being defended by Jokic in the post he
forced opponents to shoot just 40.7% from the area.
he addition of Paul Millsap before the 2017-18 season would
be both a blessing and a curse. here were some adjustments that
Jokic was forced to make to accommodate his new teammate.
10 BECK E T T.COM
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