Nikola Jokić Is Shooting 22.6% From Deep, and Denver's Injury Ledger Is the Bigger Worry

The Denver Nuggets are 3-3, which is not a crisis. The way they got there is starting to look like one.

Monday's 118-110 home loss to Portland did more than drop Denver to 1-2 at Ball Arena. It snapped an 18-game Trail Blazers regular-season road losing streak in Denver, a streak that dated back to 2010. Portland trailed 31-19 after the first quarter and still won comfortably. That is the kind of loss that lingers, and it arrived on the heels of Jokić telling reporters, regarding Nuggets fans who booed the team, "I think they're not real fans."

The Jokić numbers are genuinely strange

Through six games, Jokić is averaging 22.0 points, 9.7 rebounds and 9.0 assists on 47.2% shooting. Those are fine numbers for a normal human being. They are not Jokić numbers. Last season he posted 27.7 points, 12.9 rebounds and 10.7 assists on 56.9% from the floor and 38.0% from three across 65 games.

The three-point line is where the gap is loudest: he is 7-of-31 from deep, 22.6%. His plus-minus over the six-game window sits at minus-0.8 while he plays 36.8 minutes a night. There are encouraging counter-signals — 21 points on 8-of-13 with 13 rebounds and a plus-17 in the October 28 win at New Orleans, and reporting that his game looked far better once he went back into the paint. But the shot profile is not where Denver needs it, and Jokić's workload is already heavy.

Murray is carrying a load that isn't sustainable

Jamal Murray has been the best thing about this team. He is averaging 27.3 points, 5.7 assists and 5.5 rebounds on 48.6% shooting and a scorching 51.9% from three, including 35 points in the Portland loss and 39 in the Phoenix win. He is also at 38.3 minutes per game, and the local coverage has already flagged the danger of leaning on him this hard with a thin backup point guard situation behind him.

The supporting cast is thinning out

• Cam Johnson exited the Portland game grabbing his hamstring. He had been averaging 8.0 points on just 7.0 field goal attempts in 26.3 minutes — a low-usage role that the injury now puts in limbo.
• Aaron Gordon averaged 11.5 points on 36.1% shooting over his first six, and observers noted he "wasn't moving like himself" against the Blazers. Resting him already is on the table.
• The bench has a documented three-point shooting problem, which matters more when Jokić isn't converting from distance and defenses can shrink the floor.

The model says buy low; the schedule says be careful

Denver's underlying profile is ugly in places: a minus-2.3 point differential, 113.3 points per game against 115.7 allowed, and a minus-0.3 net rating over the last ten with just 2 ATS wins in that span. The power rating has them 18th at 1.31, up 0.37 this week but well beneath their 4.0 prior-season mark, against a demanding 1.184 strength of schedule. Notably, no key players are listed as unavailable in that rating — meaning the injury questions around Johnson and Gordon aren't yet baked in.

Toronto visits on November 4, then Denver goes on the road for four of five. With Jokić's touch still missing and the rotation thinning, the Nuggets' margin for error is smaller than their record suggests. The buy-low case exists. The health case has to hold for it to matter.