Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic: Maybe We Tricked Ourselves Into Thinking We Were Playing Well

After the Nuggets’ nine-game winning streak came to a halt against the Lakers on Saturday, Nikola Jokic raised some doubts about the legitimacy of the run, suggesting it may have been misleading.

Denver’s recent stretch of success, Jokic pointed out, came against teams that were either struggling or dealing with injuries, and the competition is about to get much tougher.

“We had the nine-game winning streak against teams that were injured, and teams that were not really good or high in the standings,” Jokic told reporters. “So maybe we tricked ourselves into (thinking) that we are playing good.”

While the Nuggets briefly climbed to second place in the Western Conference during that stretch, Saturday’s loss dropped them back to third. As Bennett Durando of The Denver Post notes, Denver will need to step up their play against tougher opponents moving forward. The Nuggets are just 10-14 on the season against teams currently with winning records.

“No one’s going to be scared that the Denver Nuggets are coming to town,” coach Michael Malone said. “So we have to play a lot better than we did tonight. We got away with it against Charlotte (on Thursday), but against the quality of opponent that we played (in the Lakers) … we have to understand that we can not just rely on our offense.

“We averaged 128 points per game on our nine-game win streak. And tonight, we had 100. So when we’re not scoring, when we’re not making shots, what are we going to do?”