"We need to put something no one's ever seen before" - Nikola Jokic likes the Nuggets' plan to play him and Jonas Valanciunas together

The Denver Nuggets are moving in a direction that more and more teams have leaned toward in recent seasons. Head coach David Adelman, speaking at Media Day ahead of the new season, said that the team could sometimes try lineups with Nikola Jokic and Jonas Valanciunas on the floor together.

When we look at how, for example, the Houston Rockets played last season, often pairing Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams on the court, or the Boston Celtics lineups with Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis, then this experiment shouldn’t surprise anyone.

After the Nuggets team’s first practice, Jokic himself responded to Adelman’s statement and shared his opinion.

“Why not? Just to put something out there, something different. I like it. We need to be creative. We need to put something (out there) no one’s ever seen before,” Jokic said.

Jokic and Valanciunas have been in a similar situation

Offensively, playing with two big men could make a lot of sense, since Jokic at the power forward spot can open the paint with his shooting, while Valanciunas could play the traditional inside-center role. Also, it wouldn’t be the first time for the Serbian and Lithuanian centers to share the floor with another big man.

Both have played those kinds of roles with their national teams — Jokic with Boban Marjanovic and Valanciunas with Domantas Sabonis — so it likely wouldn’t take much for them to adapt, especially given the three-time MVP’s basketball IQ, which allows him to fit seamlessly into any system.

Keeping up with the small ball?

On the defensive side of the floor, though, the first question marks appear. It’s hard to imagine the two of them, who both have slower lateral quickness, keeping up long-term with faster small-ball lineups. The best example was last season’s playoff series between the Golden State Warriors and the Rockets, which went to seven games.

It was a clash of styles as Houston completely dominated the glass but eventually fell short. Even Steve Kerr himself, after the first game, described Houston as an old-school team.

“Ime was a grinder as a player — tough, physical — and that’s exactly what Houston is. In this series, you can see they know where their advantage lies: playing Adams a lot, sometimes playing him with Sengun, having everybody crash,” Steve once said.

“It felt like 1997 out there to me — a completely different NBA game than what we’re used to. And we’ve got to be ready for that. This is what this series is going to be,” he stressed.

This Denver experiment will probably be seen only occasionally, in certain situations, as a counter to big lineups like Houston’s, with whom they might cross paths in the playoffs, as well as teams like the Dallas Mavericks with Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively II or the Minnesota Timberwolves with their big men.

It’s interesting to see not only centers returning to the big stage after years of small-ball lineups but also two-big-man lineups returning, something that seemed unimaginable just a couple of years ago. Denver is among the teams that look ready to try out when the season ticks off.

This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Oct 1, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

“We need to put something no one’s ever seen before” – Nikola Jokic likes the Nuggets’ plan to play him and Jonas Valanciunas together

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