After another ugly loss, Nikola Jokić sticks to his script: Nuggets fans who boo ‘are not real fans’

Nikola Jokić watched the final three and a half minutes of Monday night’s matchup with the Golden State Warriors from the bench. Denver Nuggets head coach David Adelman had pulled his starters after a Gui Santos 3-pointer gave the visitors a 21-point lead — the sort of deficit that not even a three-time NBA Most Valuable Player could erase, even if he and his teammates were playing at the peak of their powers. Which, a week into the 2026-27 NBA season, the Nuggets very evidently are not.

In most cases, you’d expect that a 20-point drubbing at the hands of a Warriors team that had entered winless and mostly feckless would elicit some level of displeasure from the paying public — a smattering of jeers from the upper deck, at least. And yet, as Jokić and his teammates sat idle while the second unit played out the string, the remaining fans in the stands at Ball Arena largely sat on their hands, barely registering any noise above a murmur in the closing moments of what would settle as a 134-114 blowout.

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Which, it seems, is the way Jokić would prefer it.

It’s been a rocky start to the season for Nikola Jokic and his Denver Nuggets. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)

(AAron Ontiveroz via Getty Images)

See, on Saturday night, the fans in attendance at Ball Arena had let loose a fusillade of boos after the Nuggets — who’d been roundly beaten by the Oklahoma City Thunder on opening night — trailed the lowly New Orleans Pelicans by as many as 23 points in their home opener before staging a fourth-quarter comeback and eventually winning in overtime. After snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, the greatest player in franchise history took those fans to task for what he saw as capricious, insufficient support.

“I think those fans who booed us, they don’t need to come anymore,” Jokić said, according to Bennett Durando of the Denver Post. “Because if you guys follow us, you know that we never quit and we came back from much worse or similar situations. If they ask me, they are not welcome anymore.”

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Two nights later, the Nuggets authored a performance in which they allowed Golden State to…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/after-another-ugly-loss-nikola-jokic-sticks-to-his-script-nuggets-fans-who-boo-are-not-real-fans-151350325.html

Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2026-10-27 15:13:00

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