The verdict is in. The impartial jury: Nikola Jokic himself.
“Probably was the best pass I ever passed in my NBA career,” Jokic said in an empty Nuggets locker room Sunday night, a week after his behind-the-back dime to Cam Johnson went viral. “So it was a good pass.”
This was Jokic’s first time speaking to reporters since the highlight, which is nearing 125,000 likes on the NBA’s official Instagram account. He was sheepish about reliving it, but he didn’t dock points for it being a preseason game. Based on pure difficulty and ingenuity, this was worthy of being labeled his best pass, the three-time MVP decided.
“I just saw the window,” Jokic said, “and why not? It happens to be a good pass.”
The Nuggets are still buzzing about it, as silly as that seems. Johnson tried to recreate the pass on their practice court a few days later, asking a player development coach to stand in the weak-side corner. That was with no defenders in the way. Jokic bamboozled three opponents along the baseline with the real thing. All it took was a glance over his left shoulder to survey the court before he unleashed the no-looker with his right hand. His back was to the basket the entire time. The ball sailed corner to corner.
Aaron Gordon offered a more strongly worded review of the play, a few days removed from it. A longtime hype man for Jokic, the power forward was left disgusted and appalled by this one. In a good way, of course.
“It wasn’t necessarily the pass that amazed me,” Gordon said. “Obviously, it was an amazing pass. But it was his ability to read the defense. So he broke the play off. The play wasn’t designed for him to catch the ball there. And he took it upon himself, because he saw something. And what he saw was a behind-the-back, cross-court pass under the basket. Which is (freaking) ridiculous.”
Gordon’s initial reaction was that it was a “top-10, top-five pass of all time.” Nobody would listen to him. People “thought I was glazing,” he said.
“And sure enough, it went viral.”
The play was supposed to lead to a DeMar DeRozan post-up, Gordon said. But Jokic was pushed into an awkward area of the court, prompting him to audible. Johnson was the teammate farthest away from him, but also the most open.
“Jok saw something,” Gordon continued. “It’s like how when teams are in zone on a baseline out-of-bounds (play), I want to take the ball out so I can throw it off somebody’s back (to myself). You know what I mean? It was like that kind of spark. He saw a (freaking) cross-court behind-the-back pass. It was the most ridiculous (crap) I’ve ever — like, that’s what you see? That’s the read that you get from the defense that they’re playing?”
As for its place in the pantheon of passes? Gordon has a soft spot for the 70-foot inbound alley-oop that Jokic threw him in Memphis three years ago. That one is special because it’s the least documented of all the great Jokic dimes. Nobody was paying attention, including most of the Nuggets, all five Grizzlies on the court and both local broadcasts. “Cameras couldn’t even catch it,” Gordon recalled.
“It’s tough. I think this one beats it. Narrowly. I just think the three-quarter court alley-oop gets so slept on. You can’t even do that in videogames.”
Not that a behind-the-back, cross-court skip pass is a common videogame play, either.
“One of the best passes ever,” Nuggets coach David Adelman said. “To be honest, live, I didn’t realize just the angle of it. So when I watched it on tape, I almost fell over. … I’ve been lucky. I’ve seen Magic (Johnson) play and (Larry) Bird and all those guys, and you see things that they do and how they see it before it happens. All those things. They know the rotation. They know the defense they’re playing against. But Nikola is a whole other thing. … This is new.”