HOUSTON — Nikola Jokic is determined to make this his season of zen.
No more animated arguments with the officials. No more pleading for calls. No more of those exasperated full-body reactions to the whistle, those classic images of a 285-pound man tightly wound up, his arms and neck shrinking into his torso, his palms facing the ceiling in bewilderment, his eyes bugging out.
Nope, no more of that. Jokic is chill with the referees now. He’s a go-with-the-flow kind of guy.
“That’s my new thing this year,” he says. “I’m not gonna get stressed or yell at the refs or whatever. I’m just gonna try to comport my energy to the basketball place.”
Jokic has waged a few wars against NBA officiating crews. He has 46 career technical fouls and nine ejections. He has made it clear in the past that he believes smaller players are allowed to get away with grabbing and shoving him an inordinate amount. He once received a rare one-tech ejection in Chicago for uttering a profanity that is considered fairly mundane in the context of professional sports — an incident so unusual that the opposing fans jeered the refs for depriving them of a superstar performance.
But the three-time MVP claims to be turning over a new leaf now.
“I feel so much better out there,” he said this week. “I don’t even think about them. It’s great.”
An exception to the rule: Jokic is not forbidden from gesturing to Nuggets coach David Adelman when he thinks a challenge is warranted. If a tangible and productive result can be achieved by refuting a call, then it’s not a waste of energy, in Jokic’s view.
He even signaled for a challenge one second into Denver’s game in New Orleans this week, after the opening jump ball was batted directly out of bounds by the Pelicans but was initially ruled to be last touched by Jokic.
Other than that, he’s trying to shut up and play the game.
Unfortunately for his new coach, that could mean heightened responsibility as a surrogate agitator.
“Yeah, he’s in a better mood, and I’m in a worse mood, and it cost me whatever it cost me the other night,” Adelman joked, referring to a technical foul he picked up Monday when the Nuggets hosted Chicago.
“I actually think it really is interesting how you approach that. … I do think certain guys, the way they react to the officials can help them, the way they interact. … In other ways, it hurts you. So if that’s the approach he’s taking, I trust him that he feels like it puts him in a better mental state. If it helps how he plays, how he feels daily, it’s a good thing.”
One more exception to the rule: Jokic made sure to get in a full season’s worth of opinions on officiating back at Nuggets training camp, when he held court for at least 15 minutes with a trio of NBA referees brought in by the team to officiate a scrimmage.
“I think that was a perfect moment for me to talk with them,” he explained. “I don’t need to yell at them, or we don’t need to yell back and forth. So just when the season started, I think it’s really helping me to focus on the game.”
Interestingly, Jokic has already been hit with two flagrant fouls early this season, and he fouled out of a game for the first time in more than a year on Wednesday. But the stat that matters is that he hasn’t picked up a technical foul.
If he makes it all year without one, it would be the first time since 2016-17.
“I think I was in most situations, I talked to them really respectfully,” he said. “But I think there is just no point to waste energy on something. If he already called something, he’s not gonna change it. He never changes it. So I think (that has) never happened, except when you challenge it. … Just try to control what you can control.”