Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets dropped their Game 3 road foray into the Footprint Center in Phoenix on Friday night, but not before Jokic showed off the kind of absurd skills that have made him a two-time MVP over the course of his career.

Jokic seemed loose and in a “joking” mood prior to Game 3, which ended with a 121-114 Suns victory and a career performance for the Serbian.

Nuggets fans marveled at the 6-11, 284 pound basketball Baryshnikov's stat-stuffing night, which ended with a triple-double and included a vast array of pinpoint passes, old school post up buckets and silky smooth floaters in 42 minutes of action.

“Imagine having a game like that…and losing? That's painful,” wrote one Twitter commenter named John Frascella after the performance.

The series returns to Phoenix for Sunday night's pivotal Game 4 at 8 p.m., and the Nuggets are a slight favorite heading into the contest. If Denver is to bounce back and take a commanding 3-1 lead in the series, star guard Jamal Murray and athletic power forward Aaron Gordon will have to play better. Murray shot just 1-for-6 from three-point land on Friday, while Gordon shot just 3-for-13 from the field despite a thunderous dunk off a post feed from Jokic that sent a message to a physical Suns team.

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Jokic and Murray are averaging 28.0 and 26.5 points per game respectively in the NBA playoffs, good for the seventh and ninth spots in postseason scoring.

Meanwhile, the Suns' Booker is tops in the league, averaging 36.9 points on nearly 50% shooting from beyond the arc. His teammate Kevin Durant is fifth in the league in postseason scoring.