Thunder devise ploy to slow down Nikola Jokic

Stopping Nikola Jokic is a nice thought for opposing head coaches, but the Denver Nuggets star proves it to be an impossibility on a nightly basis as the best basketball player on the planet.

An opponent's best chance is to hope Jokic experiences the rare subpar game or hung out with his Serbia teammates the night before trying to duplicate their legendary bender at the Paris Olympics. Otherwise, thinking you can actually prevent the eventual Jokic offensive onslaught is futile and foolish.

Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault isn't ready to give up, at least when it comes to asserting some level of control on Jokic.

In the Thunder's 140-127 loss to Denver on Monday — which split the teams' two-game series in Oklahoma City after the Thunder's 127-103 victory on Sunday — Daigneault deployed a new plan to slow down Jokic's habit of quickly inbounding the ball to jumpstart the Nuggets offense.

Daigneault had rookie Dillon Jones stand at the scorer's table as a "permanent sub" to counteract the speed at which Jokic wants to play the game.

"The ball goes out of bounds in the NBA, the officials are the ones in charge of the pace of how fast the ball gets inbounded," Daigneault explained. "Jokic is savvy. And if I was coaching Jokic, I'd appreciate him doing this too. But he gets the ball very quickly, you know, and he starts the fastbreak. And the officials start the fastbreak for him because he demands the ball and they hand it to him and he zips up the floor."

Daigneault said he came up with the idea because of a simliar situation "years ago when we were at Golden State."

"We had a sub up, and they missed the sub. They inbounded the ball so fast," he said. "And so I put a sub up tonight and I was like, 'Hey, you're going to have to call (Jones) in every single out of bounds in order to slow the game down if you guys are going to give them an advantage by handing him the ball fast.

"They delay-of-gamed that. I don't know if there's a rule against doing that. I think you can have a sub up there and choose not to put him in the game. But it was something that I went to.

"If they're gonna quick the ball in for them, then I'm gonna do that."

Jones did eventually get into the game. The 2024 No. 24 overall pick from Weber State came on after Daigneault pulled his starters with 1:46 remaining in the fourth quarter and OKC trailing 138-122.

Thunder deploy shrewd maneuver to slow down Nikola Jokic, Nuggets

By Joe Lago | Mar 11, 2025