The decision-makers inside the Denver Nuggets’ front office used to play a parlor game concerning franchise pillar Nikola Jokic.
Had the Nuggets not chosen Jokic with the No. 41 selection in the 2014 draft, a prescient pick that laid the foundation for this season’s surprising success, how high, they wondered, would he have gone a year later after a breakthrough season overseas?
By then, the rest of the NBA would have discovered what the Nuggets already knew: That Jokic, though he does not look the part, has a preternatural gift for the game. No one could have predicted that Jokic, the team’s first all-star in eight years, would spawn a hoops renaissance in Denver.