A basketball rim measures a sleek 18 inches in diameter, or about the size of a large pizza, and in the wintry days of a long NBA season the hoop can start to blur. The Nuggets suddenly lost sight of their winning ways since the holidays.
“We lost focus,” Denver’s Nikola Jokic said. They had won just once in the new year. Facing a four-year playoff drought, losing skids in Denver can feel like winter is settling in.
But Jokic on Tuesday honed in. In the Nuggets’ 105-102 victory over the Dallas Mavericks at the Pepsi Center, Denver’s big man dominated from the jump, dumping 29 points and a season-high 18 rebounds.