Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic sustained a left knee injury at the end of the first half during Monday night’s game against the Miami Heat. The team ruled him out for the second half and the three-time MVP underwent an MRI Tuesday that confirmed a hyperextended left knee that will keep him out for at least four weeks.
While losing Jokić for a month is far from ideal for the Nuggets, it’s a far better outcome than a season-ending injury, which was part of the fear when he went to the ground grabbing at his knee.
Jokić fell to the ground after making accidental contact with teammate Spencer Jones, who was guarding Jaime Jaquez Jr. Jokić immediately fell while grabbing his left knee after making contact with Jones. He was quickly surrounded by members of the team’s training staff.
“Immediately, he knew something was wrong,” Nuggets coach David Adelman told reporters after the game. “Hey, this is part of the NBA. Anybody who gets hurt in this game, it’s kind of gut-wrenching, especially somebody as special as he is. We’ll find out more tomorrow. We’ll move on as a team. Obviously, right now, I’m more concerned just about him as a person and the disappointment of going through something like that.”
Jokić, 30, is in the midst of another MVP-caliber season. A three-time league MVP and the 2023 NBA Finals MVP, Jokić is averaging 29.9 points and is leading the league in both rebounds (12.4) and assists (11.1) per game for the Nuggets, who are off to a 22-10 start. His MVP candidacy is now in jeopardy due to the NBA’s 65-game minimum for the award. Even a return shortly after the four-week re-evaluation would put him up against that minimum, and one would expect some injury management to be part of his return protocol on back-to-backs when he first gets back into the lineup.
Bad luck would be better than the luck the Nuggets have had this year from an injury standpoint. Aaron Gordon is currently out with a hamstring injury, Cameron Johnson is expected to miss 4 to 6 weeks after injuring his knee earlier this month, and Christian Braun is out indefinitely after suffering a significant ankle sprain last month.
Now they will be missing Jokić for a month, making for an extremely challenging January. The Nuggets are currently third in the West, but are just three games ahead of the Suns in the 7-seed. By the time Jokić returns, they may be battling to avoid the play-in rather than fighting for homecourt advantage in the first round. How they fare in his absence, which will shift an even greater burden onto Jamal Murray, may determine how they handle his return. They may view the All-Star break as an opportunity to steal Jokić an additional week of recovery, but that would be an absence of more than six weeks to reach that point.
