MAGIC
His passing was a huge reason Jamal Murray had 31 points, Trey Lyles posted 12 and Monte Morris added 13.
“We couldn’t guard the high pick-and-roll the whole game,” Magic coach Steve Clifford said. “We can look at all these other things, ‘Did he step out of bounds?’ The foul differential, all of that. … The bottom line is we couldn’t guard the high pick-androll, which is hard to do, but we gotta do a lot better than that.”
Clifford, however, knows Denver is one of the most difficult pickand-roll offenses to defend in the entire league. He talked about it before the game.
“He’s a very unique player and there are a couple of parts to that. One, he’s a terrific passer, and the other added advantage, I think, for guys at that position, is he has other centers guarding him,” Clifford said of Jokic. “[Magic center Nikola Vucevic] does the same thing. They don’t get the same ball pressure and stuff against them like say a point guard does … but he’s an incredible passer.
“What set’s it up is they play four out so they have a lot of shooting on the floor, and then he can shoot 3s, so it forces centers to guard him in a totally different way than they’re used to. He’s a handful.”
Clifford said no matter how much you prepare for the Nuggets high pickand-roll offense, it’s still going to hurt you.
“Also, he’s the dominant ball handler on the team, he and Murray, so it’s definitely a challenge, especially [playing] back-toback [games] where there’s no practice time,” Clifford said of Jokic. “Although I say that, we had two days last time and he carved us up, so that went well too [laughing].”
Jokic’s good friend and fellow European Vucevic, the Magic’s 7-foot center who is also an excellent passer, understands. He also knows that the Magic could have chalked up a victory had they made a few more defensive stops, especially late.
“Absolutely. We played a really good game offensively, scored like 20 3s or something,” Vucevic said. “We just couldn’t get stops consistently. They’re a really good team. They have a lot of good scoring options and they do a very good job of running their stuff, especially through Jokic. It’s a tough loss whenever you take a team to overtime and lose, it’s not easy, but we could have done a better job defensively for sure.”