Did Nikola Jokic just turn in the best regular season performance of his career?

Nikola Jokic caught the ball in the mid-post against Rudy Gobert, sensed the reigning Defensive Player of the Year on his back, stepped back with his right foot and launched a high-arching fadeaway that gave the Nuggets a 96-95 lead with under one minutes remaining in regulation.

Jokic invented his signature shot — the Sombor Shuffle which it’s been called for the last two seasons — while recovering from an injured left ankle injury in December, 2017. He realized at the time that it was easier for him to jump off of his right foot rather than his weaker left, and thus one of the colder finishing moves in all of the NBA was born.

The Nuggets took their first lead since the 10:22 mark of the fourth on Jokic’s wrong-footed fadeaway and never looked back. Denver edged Utah 98-95 despite playing just seven players — Jokic, Jamal Murray, Gary Harris, Monte Morris, Torrey Craig, P.J. Dozier and Vlatko Cancar — for its best win of the season and what will go down as the best win of the Michael Malone era to this point.

Murray was magnificent against the Jazz, chipping in 31 points on 12 of 26 shooting in his second game back in the lineup since a 10-game absence. So was Morris, who’s 15 points gave Denver a third source of scoring with Harris (five points on 0-13 shooting), Craig (eight points), and Dozier (five points) unable to crack double-figures.

However, the efforts of Denver’s supporting cast wouldn’t have mattered if Jokic didn’t come up with another brilliant performance. He dominated Gobert and the Jazz for the second time in the last week, finishing with 32 points, 20 rebounds, 10 assists and two steals, becoming only the third player since the NBA-ABA merger (DeMarcus Cousins, David Lee) to post at least a 30-20-10 stat line. According to ESPN Stats and Info, Jokic and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the only players in NBA history (including playoffs) with 30 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists on the road before turning 25 years old.

In the fourth quarter, Jokic, the most clutch player in the league this season, turned in another clutch close to regulation. He tallied nine points over the game’s final 12 minutes, six of which came in the final five minutes of the fourth. Jokic is now 11-for-15 on shots to tie or take the lead in the final 60 seconds of the fourth quarter or overtime since Dec. 2018, per NBA.com and thirteen of Jokic’s 14 field goals against the Jazz, including his latest Sombor two-step, came with Gobert as his primary defender, per ESPN Stats and Info.

Thursday represented another crowning achievement for Jokic as he continues to navigate the walking wounded Nuggets through the dog days of the regular season. Denver hasn’t started its opening night starting five since Jan. 6, but over the last month the Nuggets have managed to go 11-5 with wins over the Mavericks, Clippers, Jazz (twice), Trail Blazers and Bucks, which was Denver’s signature win of the season before Wednesday’s thriller.

The Nuggets have been down two and three starters for most of this stretch and key reserve Mason Plumlee has missed Denver’s last nine games. Michael Porter Jr. has sat for three-straight with a bum ankle.

With every teammates that’s gone down with an injury, Jokic has raised his game even further. In Utah he carried a seven-man skeleton crew that only had two players available off the bench — Cancar, a rookie and former second-round pick who had only played 21 total minutes of garbage time this year, and Dozier, a third-year reserve point guard who was only thrust into the Nuggets’ rotation in January when Murray missed 10 games due to an ankle injury.

It didn’t matter. Since Jan. 1, Jokic is averaging 24.9 points, 10.9 rebounds and 7.1 assists across a team-high 34.3 minutes per game.

This is the best stretch of regular season basketball of Jokic’s career and considering the circumstances, with only seven players available on the second-night of a back-to-back in Denver’s fifth game in seven nights, mark this win over the Jazz down as the best regular season game that I’ve ever seen Jokic play.

It was more impressive than his career-high 47 points earlier this season against the Hawks or any of his three other 40-plus point regular season showings.

We are witnessing greatness.

We are witnessing the best big man in the league dispose of his top rivals one by one.

We are witnessing the First Team All-NBA center for a second-year in a row rebound from a slow start to the season, flip a switch and bounce back to dominate his competition over the next three months.

We are witnessing an MVP candidate continue to lift his team up one night after the next.

The Nuggets improved to 36-16 on the season. If Denver pushes its current win streak to three games Saturday in Phoenix, the Nuggets will have to same record through 53 games that they had to start last year’s 54-win campaign.

Jokic is a special player and the resiliency that this Nuggets team has shown this season is extraordinary.

Remember this night in Utah.

Cherish it.

Jokic and the Nuggets may never have another regular season performance like it.