Nikola Jokic erased a 23-point deficit, set the NBA’s all-time combined triple-double record in the process, and still made sure the headline out of the Denver Nuggets’ home opener was him telling the fans who booed him that they’re not welcome back. Denver trailed the New Orleans Pelicans 53-30 in the second quarter and were down 16 at halftime before escaping with a 141-135 overtime win. Jokic finished with 35 points, 15 rebounds and 10 assists, the 222nd triple-double of his career combining regular season and playoffs, in the same game he passed Russell Westbrook for the all-time combined triple-double record. Eight of those 35 points came in overtime, well after his own crowd had already turned on him.
That part is remarkable on its own. The sentence attached to it is the part that’s sticking: “they are not welcome anymore,” aimed at booing Nuggets fans, gets absorbed into a highlight instead of treated as the controversy it would be from anyone else. A role player telling his home crowd to stay away is a bulletin-board story for a week. A three-time MVP saying it the same night he breaks the league’s most durable individual record gets to let the stat line do the explaining the sentence can’t do by itself.
Jokic is allowed to be annoyed with the people who boo him down 23; he is not entitled to decide who gets to keep showing up.
His exact words, after the game: “We got booed at our first home game, and I think those fans who booed us, they don’t need to come anymore…If you guys follow us, you know that we never quit and we’ve come back from much worse situations. So, if they ask me, they are not welcome anymore.” There’s no ambiguity in that sentence: a three-time MVP telling paying customers, specifically, that their money isn’t wanted anymore.
The quote hit social media before the final box score did.
https://twitter.com/MileHighRachel/status/2114218748101947610
Nuggets fans didn’t let it sit. Plenty argued, pointedly, that the second-quarter boos were exactly what lit the fuse under the comeback, which makes “not welcome anymore” a strange way to thank the people who allegedly motivated the record. Jokic got the stat line. The fans who booed him into it got told to stay home.
The record Jokic actually broke is Westbrook’s combined total, regular season and playoffs together, 222 to 221. He’s still ten behind Westbrook’s regular-season-only mark of 209, a gap he said he’s holding off on texting Westbrook about until he closes it too. The two were teammates in Denver for one season before Westbrook left in free agency and retired in August after eighteen years in the league, closing out with the Sacramento Kings.
Social media didn’t need the quote to go off; the triple-double record did that on its own.
https://twitter.com/Shapalicious/status/2114200328325546340
My brother in Phoenix texted me the clip of the triple-double three times before I’d seen a single highlight myself, like I might have missed it the first two. This isn’t the first time Jokic has run out of patience with Nuggets fans, and Westbrook’s retirement didn’t exactly settle the triple-double argument he just reopened by breaking it himself.
History doesn’t buy Jokic the right to fire his own fans.
