The Portland Trail Blazers live to fight another day as they downed the Denver Nuggets on Thursday, 119-108, in Game 6 of this Western Conference Playoffs matchup. There were a lot of factors that came into play in this victory, but perhaps the most significant is how the Blazers were able to prevent Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic from leading his side to victory.
To be clear, Jokic still had an remarkable night, logging 29 points (on a highly-efficient 10-of-15 shooting), two three-pointers, 12 rebounds, and eight assists. However, he produced a negative +/- rating on the evening — a first in the entire series.
https://twitter.com/AndyGlockner/status/1126714304940527616
Over the first five games, Jokic's average +/- rating was a +13.2, which just shows how dominant he has been throughout the series. Even in Games 2 and 3 — both of which were losses for the Nuggets — the All-Star big man still averaged a +3.5 rating for both games. This was likely a big factor why Portland's margin of victory in both games (average of 5.0 points, including a memorable razor-thin Game 3 three-point victory in quadruple overtime) was much lower compared to their 11-point win in Game 6.
As the tweet above explained, stopping Jokic — or at least not letting him lift his side to victory — is going to be the key for Portland if they hope to come away with this series in Game 7. The final, deciding game of this tightly-contested series will be on Sunday night, and surely, the Blazers will want to have a repeat of their amazing Game 6 performance.
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