"It was natural for him": A brief oral history of Nikola Jokic and Mason Plumlee's 5-5 pick-and-roll

Nikola Jokic says he learned the game of basketball as a fat point guard growing up in Sombor, Serbia, by watching YouTube highlights of Magic Johnson running the break for the Showtime Lakers, Hakeem Olajuwon executing Dream Shake upon Dream Shake and Michael Jordan hitting one big shot after another for the 1990’s Bulls.

You see bits and pieces of all three Hall-of-Famers’ games in Jokic, but when he leads the Nuggets’ fastbreak and acts as Denver’s de facto point guard, he reminds you of a slower and more plodding version of the Laker great.

Jokic exhibited his point guard chops midway through the third quarter of Sunday’s 116-113 win over the Trail Blazers when he teamed up with frontcourt partner Mason Plumlee for one of the Nuggets’ top plays of the season — a 5-5 dribble-hand-off which morphed into a pick-and-roll between Denver’s two bigs and ended with a one-handed Plumlee slam at the rim.

Here’s how one of the most memorable plays from the Nuggets’ season went down.

Will Barton: “Joker is a big point guard. He’s just 7-foot and he’s our center, but he’s really a point guard. You can tell the way he plays and reads the floor, so we’re never surprised.”

Nikola Jokic: “(We’ve never run) a pick-and-roll. We did something similar (in a game). But not pick-and-roll.”

Michael Malone: “The great thing about that is you have your best passer in Nikola, and you have your best athlete in Mason where you can just throw the ball up. You can just throw the ball up anywhere. You can make the pass, and he’s going to catch it and finish it.”

Barton: “He puts so much pressure on the defense that he can either score or throw a lob like he did tonight. And you know Mason is going to go get it.”

Jamal Murray: “It’s crazy when you see Joker coming off the pin-down. He makes a good play every time. That’s what makes it funny. So that was a hell of a play. Mason got up for that dunk and got the fans going.”

Mason Plumlee: “(Jokic) came off so fast (laughs). He lowered his shoulder. It was natural for him. I do what I do with the guards.”

Jokic: “He can jump really high. Sometimes he surprises people. He surprised me.”

Barton: “They work on that stuff in practice. Joker will tell him sometimes, ‘Come set a screen.'”

Malone: “I believe Nikola and Jamal might lead the NBA in efficiency in pick-and-rolls, and it’s not Jamal handling, it’s Nikola handling with Jamal setting, which is obviously not what you’re used to. And then to have Nikola handing and Mason screening, and that was a hell of a play.”