The Denver Nuggets began their NBA title defense with a home victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday night, a 7-seed whom the Nuggets had upset in the Western Conference Finals just one year prior. In his 283rd career playoff game, LeBron James scored 27 points and added 6 rebounds and 8 assists, but a pair of big men — Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis — stole the spotlight from arguably the greatest player of all time, delivering a throwback performance that our grandfathers would be proud of, providing us with a box score that hasn’t been equaled since long before I was born.
On Monday’s episode of The Hoop Collective, Brian Windhorst stumped his co-hosts with a trivia question that correctly reflected how impressive Jokic and Davis were. “Do you know the last time, according to Stats and Info, that two Centers went for 30 (points), 10 (rebounds), and 5 assists in a playoff game?” Windhorst questioned Tim Bontemps and Tim McMahon. “Are you talking like Duncan and Shaq, are you talking Hakeem and Robinson?” Bontemps asked. “Wilt and Kareem is my final answer,” McMahon said. Windy came down with a sledgehammer made in the 1960s. “Try ’62,” Windhorst replied. “Russell vs. Wilt.”
In a 114-103 loss, Anthony Davis had 32 points, 15 rebounds, 5 assists, and 4 blocks, while Jokic had 32 points, 12 rebounds, and 7 assists. By Jokic’s standards, this is a somewhat ordinary performance. The Joker is constantly doing things that were previously impossible or done decades ago. I mean, we’re talking about a player who averaged 30 points, 13.5 rebounds, and 9.5 assists per game throughout Denver’s postseason run last year. But Jokic has never faced an opponent like this in a playoff game.
And, to be honest, even for Russell and Wilt, rivals who squared off more times in the postseason than any other pair of Hall of Fame players in league history, this kind of statistical productivity was uncommon. Consider that Chamberlain and Russell faced each other in 40 more postseason games after this encounter, and they never again combined for such high totals. Neither did Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson (6 meetings), Moses Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (7 meetings), Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal (8 meetings), Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain (11 meetings), Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal (30 meetings), or Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki (36 meetings).
