Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic has spent the 2020s perched atop a tier of his own relative to his NBA peers.
Generally regarded as the best basketball player in the world because of his analytics, his three NBA Most Valuable Player awards, and his 2022-23 NBA championship, which earned him the Finals Most Valuable Player award for that series, Jokic is a standard to which many NBA players are judged.
Jokic, in a podcast interview, touched on an introspective topic when he discussed which NBA players are the best at defending him. Jokic’s answers are insightful as he delved into the nuances of not only who defends him well in the NBA but also why they are effective at defending him.
The Chicago Bulls' scouting department should use Jokic's words to create their profile for their center of the future.
Defending Jokic as a five-man unit
Jokic, in his podcast interview, acknowledged, “Some teams defend very well as a unit”.
One of the most exemplary efforts of defending Jokic as a unit took place during the 2024-25 NBA season, when the Los Angeles Lakers executed a physical defensive game plan against Jokic and the Nuggets on Feb 22, 2025, resulting in a 123-100 Lakers win.
The Lakers aggressively fronted Jokic to deny him the ball throughout the game, to the effect of limiting The Joker to seven field goal attempts for the entire game.
For context, Jokic averaged 19.5 field goal attempts per game for the 2024-25 NBA season, according to Basketball Reference. Overall, this game was an outlier defensive effort by the Lakers, as they finished the 2024-25 NBA season as the 15th-ranked NBA defense, according to Basketball Reference.
Regardless, the Lakers' defensive effort against Jokic back in Feb 2025 is a relevant data point for game planning an effective team defense to neutralize Jokic’s offensive impact.
Individual Jokic defender attributes to target
An obvious approach to acquiring a center who can effectively defend Jokic is to acquire a sizeable center who can match up well against the 6’11”, 284-pound Serbian MVP.
Jokic cited the Indiana Pacers' Ivica Zubac and his former Nuggets teammate, current Utah Jazz center Jusuf Nurkic, as centers who defend him well because “they’re just bulkier”.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jokic also acknowledged undersized centers who give him trouble as an opposing defender, such as “tricky” restricted free-agent Jalen Duren and former Bulls first-round draft pick, Orlando Magic center Wendell Carter Jr.
nice defensive possession by Wendell Carter Jr.
— Ryan Kaminski NBA (@beyondtheRK) April 5, 2021
switching to cut Jamal off from the rim, holding his own with Jokic in the post, and recovering the loose ball off a mishandled pass to force the turnover. pic.twitter.com/HKsLvnpnJr
Presumably, what centers like Duren or Carter Jr. lack in size, they offset with skill in their defensive matchups against Jokic. Overall, the Bulls' long-term center rotation should probably balance both size and defensive skill to provide a variety of defensive challenges to Jokic and the entire league.
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