DENVER — Not Michael Jordan, not Wilt Chamberlain, not Oscar Robertson and not even LeBron James ever had the day that Nikola Jokic had on the NBA’s premier day.
On Christmas night, when gifts are exchanged, families unite and the country turns to basketball for the first time of the season, Jokic presented one of the greatest individual performances in the history of the sport — doing so on the league’s biggest stage against his and his team’s most bitter rivals.
The Xmasterclass from Saint Nikola carried his shorthanded Denver Nuggets as they outlasted the haunting Minnesota Timberwolves 142-138 in overtime Thursday, overcoming the absence of three starters and yet another calamitous fourth-quarter collapse against the team from the Twin Cities.
Jokic’s Game Score for the night of 59.8 — an all-encompassing measure of individual performance, akin to fantasy points — ranks as the seventh-best in NBA history and the best ever recorded on Christmas. It was Big Honey again, torching four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert by drawing early foul trouble and feasting on smaller Wolves defenders. Jokic poured in the second-most points of his career and third-most on Christmas Day at 56, trailing only Bernard King’s 60 in 1984 and Wilt Chamberlain’s 59 in 1961.
Then Jokic really got Jamal Murray and Tim Hardaway Jr. involved, tossing 15 assists. And while doing all of that, Jokic had a game-high 16 rebounds. It was his 15th triple-double of the season and the ninth recorded before the third quarter ended, and the first 55-15-15 game in league history.
“We’re watching history on a night-to-night basis,” forward Peyton Watson said afterward. “That’s why I want to continue to stress to the fans just how important it is to show up here and really enjoy this and really not take this for granted, because this is something that doesn’t happen again. We will never see anything like this again.”
Simply put, it was what pro sports are all about: the absolute best at their absolute best.
NIKOLA JOKIĆ WITH VIDEO GAME STATS ON CHRISTMAS DAY 🤯
🃏 56 PTS
🃏 16 REB
🃏 15 AST
🃏 2 BLK
🃏 4 3PM
THE FIRST 55/15/15 GAME IN NBA HISTORY 🚨 pic.twitter.com/8LPXlFWO6V
— NBA (@NBA) December 26, 2025
St. Nik needed to deliver on Christmas night for the Nuggets, too. Coal was put in the team’s stockings earlier this week when Cameron Johnson joined the already injured Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun as the third starter sidelined with an ailment. Johnson will miss at least a month due to a bone bruise in his right knee, elevating Tim Hardaway Jr. into the starting five. Hardaway finished as the third wheel with 19 points to a heavy Jokic-Murray two-man game.
While it was a record high temperature in Denver again for Christmas, Murray made a flurry from deep — connecting on nine triples, the sixth-most in franchise history. He blizzarded for 35 points and 10 assists as he and Jokic became the first teammates in league history to combine for 90 or more points and 25-plus assists in the same game. Murray drilled the biggest shot of the night: a triple with 36 seconds left in overtime that gave the Nuggets a lead they never relinquished.
JAMAL MURRAY BROUGHT THE HEAT TO CHRISTMAS DAY!
🔥 35 PTS
🔥 10 AST
🔥 9 3PM (most ever in Christmas Day game)
He joins Luka Dončić and Tracy McGrady with the only 35-PT, 10-AST, 5-3PM games in #NBAXmas history. pic.twitter.com/LithevHmF5
— NBA (@NBA) December 26, 2025
Murray more than atoned for his fourth-quarter turnover with seven seconds left, which the Wolves converted to trim the deficit to one. That giveaway was part of a dizzying sequence in which Denver fouled Anthony Edwards on a 3-point attempt and ultimately squandered a 15-point lead in the final five minutes. Edwards buried a fadeaway buzzer-beater from the corner to send the game into overtime. Minnesota roared on a wild 33-9 run spanning the end of regulation and the opening of the extra period, seizing a nine-point advantage in overtime.
“They have some really, really good players over here,” Jokic said. “We had the opportunity to finish the game. We didn’t finish the game in regulation, and we found a way to come back.”
But Edwards’ 44-point inferno — 24 of them scorching through the fourth quarter and overtime — still couldn’t outshine Denver’s supernova. The league’s most efficient offense found another gear when it mattered most.
Edwards’ night ended early when he raged his way into an ejection with under a minute remaining in overtime, following his big man Gobert, who had already fouled out. To the Wolves’ frustration, Jokic tied a Christmas Day record with 22 made free throws — a career high.
After going scoreless for the first two minutes of overtime, Denver called a timeout and proceeded to set an NBA record for most points in an overtime period at 27, led by Jokic’s record-setting 18 points in the extra frame, breaking Stephen Curry’s mark of 17 from 2016.
“It sounds crazy, but I didn’t think we were completely out of it,” head coach David Adelman said. “Just because the way that game was, the shot-making and the star players doing what they did, you just felt like there were more moments to the game if we could just get ourselves back into it.”
Spencer Jones delivered two critical pin-down screens that freed Jokic for 3-pointers that sandwiched a Hardaway Jr. triple in transition. The first for Joker came when Jones knocked off his defender, All-Defensive Team member Jaden McDaniels, for an open look; on the second, when Minnesota switched, Jones screened his own man to spring the three-time MVP — again catching out Gobert and McDaniels.
“All of a sudden, it’s a one-possession game, just like that,” Adelman said.
Then Jokic’s gifts kept coming — with another bucket wrapped in an impossible angle to tie the game back up.
“I always say this because I’ve been on the other side of it: They’re going to show this game 20 years from now, and I’ll crack open the beer and watch it,” Adelman said. “There are other ones that I flip on NBA TV, and I immediately turn the channel.”
The rivalry between these franchises demanded such theater. Denver led Minnesota 3-2 in the second round of the 2024 playoffs before suffering the worst postseason loss by margin in club history, a 20-point blown lead in Game 7 and a regular-season sweep in 2024-25 that included two blowouts and two collapses — one that ultimately precipitated Michael Malone’s departure. These franchises have traded haymakers for three seasons now, 27 bruising rounds that left both bloodied, but the Nuggets may be the last ones standing. They appear to have exorcised whatever demons lingered via three consecutive wins.
“They’re one of the best teams in the league. They have been for years,” Adelman said. “It’s always a challenge to play them. I think it’s just experience, and it’s going to teeter-totter with these two teams. We know each other so well.”
Even still, the Wolves staged their comeback, conjuring flashbacks to the teams’ last meeting in Denver — that gut-wrenching double-overtime loss late last season.
“You never forget those things, but I think that’s for the better,” Watson said. “I don’t think anybody here is scared of the moment. That team is a team full of fighters, full of competitors, full of great players. We knew tonight was going to be a dogfight.”
The ghosts of Game 7 will keep howling from Minneapolis and growing louder until Denver snags another ring. On this night, there were 56 reasons to believe Saint Nik is more powerful than Ant-a Clause.
What’s next for the Nuggets?
Thursday was the last Nuggets game in Denver for 2025; the team tips off a season-long seven-game road trip on Saturday in Orlando. They hope to get Braun and Gordon back on the road, though Adelman has still not set a timeline on either player.
DA says it’s a historic night and one Jokic’s five best games as a Nugget. Ton of praise for his decision making pic.twitter.com/8NN67MfC9v
— Jake Shapiro, but festive 👻🦃🎄 (@Shapalicious) December 26, 2025
