{"id":634775,"date":"2026-03-02T17:01:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/634775\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T17:01:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:01:23","slug":"the-bounce-look-at-nikola-jokics-vengeful-eyes-plus-unrivaled-playoffs-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/634775\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bounce: Look at Nikola Joki\u0107\u2019s vengeful eyes. Plus, Unrivaled playoffs preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bounce Newsletter\u00a0\":basketball:\"\u00a0| This is The Athletic\u2019s daily NBA newsletter.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.<\/p>\n

On this date in 1962, Wilt Chamberlain set an NBA record by scoring 100 points in a game. He also set the record for field goals made (36), attempted (63), free throws made (28), field goals in a half (22), field-goal attempts in a half (37), field-goal attempts in a quarter (21) and points in a half (59). Wilt also broke his own record for field goals attempted in a game, which had been 62. In that 62-attempt game, he only scored 78 points. Adrian Dantley later tied Wilt\u2019s record for free throws in a game, while Nikola Joki\u0107 tied his record for field-goal attempts in a quarter.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Joki\u0107 \u2026<\/p>\n

Joker Face<\/p>\n

Yes this was a dirty play by Lu Dort<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The viral moment in Friday night\u2019s awesome 127-121 overtime win by the Thunder over the Nuggets had nothing to do with MVP candidates Joki\u0107 and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander\u2019s play on the court. It had everything to do with Lu Dort hip-checking Joki\u0107 and what unfolded after that.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, I don\u2019t want to be careful about the wording used here. I saw push notifications from other places and carefully crafted social media captions all roughly saying something like, \u201cDort appears to trip Joki\u0107.\u201d Uh \u2026 that\u2019s one way of putting it. I would, personally, use the words, \u201cIt looked like Dort tried to re-injure the left knee that cost Joki\u0107 16 straight games earlier this season.\u201d Because that\u2019s exactly how it looked to everybody outside of OKC.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not supposed to come out and say it that bluntly, though. You can take a look for yourself at the play from a little over eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. The angle above of Dort\u2019s hip-check of Joki\u0107\u2019s knee shows it perfectly, and you can determine if you think this seems intentional.<\/p>\n

Dort is one of the best defenders in the league. He\u2019s a hyper-intelligent player with a physical style of play. He kind of sets the tone for that great Thunder defense. At the same time, when you type his name into a YouTube search bar, the first options that come up are about dirty plays. There are long videos dedicated to showing some questionable hits over the years. And there is just zero world in which the motion you see above is justified.<\/p>\n

This enraged Joki\u0107, who also has a reputation. Aside from his great play over the years, Joki\u0107 also has no issue getting in the face of opponents when he\u2019s angry. He invades their space while he yells and makes them continue to back up. Few players have stepped to him and not immediately been physically forced to back down. And, of course, his brothers are always lurking<\/a>. When he walked up on Dort, the Thunder\u2019s Jaylin Williams decided to intervene, and it got more physical.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see, Joki\u0107 didn\u2019t love that! He starts to grab Williams\u2019 hair before swinging his arms to break free of the OKC big man\u2019s attempt to keep Joki\u0107 away from Dort. That led to the viral look from Joki\u0107 in which he went from Big Honey to downright feral.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nuggets coach David Adelman did not let it go and called the play by Dort \u201cmalicious.\u201d When you see the angle from the baseline camera, as we showed above, it\u2019s hard to view it any other way. The game, plus this incident, made everybody want to sign up for a seven-game series between Denver and OKC sometime in May.<\/p>\n

The last 24<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc0 Who\u2019s No. 1? Sam Vecenie has his latest NBA mock draft. There\u2019s still debate at the top, and this class has a chance to be absurdly deep<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2600\ufe0f Fun in the sun. Phoenix has been one of the NBA\u2019s surprise teams. The friendship between Dillon Brooks and Devin Booker is a big reason why, Jason Quick writes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc3a Howlin\u2019. The Wolves went into Denver and beat the Nuggets on Sunday. They are part of the conversation out West, Sam Amick writes<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfc0 Finally here. The Clippers traded James Harden for Darius Garland at the deadline. Garland makes his Clippers debut tonight<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfa9 Magical tribute. The Hawks turned heads by planning a Magic City Night. This actually makes sense<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stream the NBA on Fubo (try it for free!<\/a>)\u00a0and catch out-of-market games on\u00a0League Pass<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NBA Stock Report<\/p>\n

Streaks snapped for Spurs, Bulls<\/p>\n

Every Monday, we walk right into the heart of NBA trends. We stand around in the middle of the floor, look up at the big screens with lots of numbers in green or red fonts and then assess whether teams are headed up or down. Let\u2019s dive into the NBA Stock Market:<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc8 Spurs (43-17). Their 11-game win streak got snapped on Sunday by the Knicks, but that doesn\u2019t change how great the Spurs have been over the last month. They didn\u2019t lose a game in February. And their success continues to be fueled by their ridiculous defense, which ranks fourth in the NBA over the past 12 games and is led by Victor Wembanyama\u2019s incredible rim protection. He has 42 blocked shots over the last 12 games.<\/p>\n

San Antonio is shooting 49.5 percent from the field, and its top-six scorers over the last 12 games have combined to make 50.5 percent.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc9 Bulls (25-36). \u00a0It looked like the Bulls were headed toward their 12th straight loss before a 27-0 run against Milwaukee on Sunday<\/a>. Even with that incredible run, this Bulls team has been rough. The Spurs went undefeated in February; the Bulls balanced that out by going winless<\/a>. Chicago is 24th in defense and 29th in offense during the last 12 games. The Bulls are turning the ball over nearly 18 percent of the time. They\u2019re not making shots (27th). They\u2019re not grabbing defensive rebounds (23rd).<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc8 Hawks (31-31). Since the All-Star break, the Hawks are on fire. They\u2019ve won five of their last six to get to .500. The brightest spot in this stretch might be Jonathan Kuminga. You may remember him as one of the fixtures on Steve Kerr\u2019s bench. But in his three games with the Hawks, he\u2019s averaging 21.3 points, 7.7 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.7 steals. He\u2019s also made 67.7 percent of his shots. The Hawks may have gotten the steal of the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc9 Trail Blazers (29-33). The Blazers are 2-4 since getting back from the break, but their play on both ends of the floor is so much worse than that record would indicate. Their offense is a putrid 102.9 rating, and their 117.0 defensive rating in these six games is about as bad as what Washington is doing. The Blazers are making just 29.3 percent of their 3-pointers in these six games. The only 3-point shooters they can rely on right now are Jerami Grant and Donovan Clingan.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc8 Rockets (37-22). Things have looked hectic with the Rockets as of late, but their offense and defense have both stabilized since the All-Star break. They\u2019re sixth in offense and ninth in defense during their last six games (4-2). Offensively, the Rockets have continued to struggle taking care of the ball (26th), but they\u2019re making up for it by posting the second-best effective field-goal and true shooting percentages. That\u2019s been needed, because without Steven Adams, it\u2019s a lot harder to dominate the offensive boards.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc9 Suns\u2019 offense. Without Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks, Phoenix\u2019s offense is cratering. We\u2019re talking football field in Gotham City level of cratering.<\/a> Before the All-Star break, the Suns ranked 14th in the league with a 114.5 offensive rating. Since then, they have a 100.6 offensive rating. That\u2019s the worst in the NBA. Just to put that into context, the Trust the Process 76ers averaged an offensive rating of 98.75 from 2013 to 2017.<\/p>\n

(Check out the full NBA standings here<\/a>, and read the extended version of the NBA Stock Report every Monday in my NBA Rewind<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Unrivaled playoffs<\/p>\n

Can Vinyl spin a championship in Season 2?<\/p>\n

The Unrivaled League\u2019s second season is coming to a close with its semifinals tonight and the championship game on Wednesday. Despite not having league co-founder Napheesa Collier (after tearing three ligaments in her ankle in September), we\u2019ve seen an incredible second season. The 3-on-3 league set the record for the biggest attendance for a professional women\u2019s basketball game with 21,490 in Philadelphia on Jan. 31. We\u2019ve seen the Phantom (11-3) and Mist (10-4) dominate most of the season. And we\u2019ve seen Vinyl (5-9) and Breeze (6-8) sneak into these semifinals.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what you need to know for tonight\u2019s do-or-die games:<\/p>\n

Vinyl vs. Phantom, 7:30 p.m. ET on TNT in Brooklyn<\/p>\n

Vinyl nearly won the inaugural championship with Dearica Hamby and Rhyne Howard last year, but it\u2019s the Phantom that come in as a menace in this league. They\u2019ve won seven straight games to be the top team. Kelsey Plum and Aliyah Boston have led the way with Tiffany Hayes\u2019 outside shooting helping a lot. Vinyl got to this game by beating Lacers on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Season matchup: Phantom are 2-0 against Vinyl this year. The second win saw Plum and Boston both score 30 in the same game. They were the first teammates to do that in league history.<\/p>\n

The star to carry them: The matchup of Hamby versus Boston will likely decide this.<\/p>\n

Breeze vs. Mist, 8:45 p.m. ET on TNT in Brooklyn<\/p>\n

The Mist have the highest point differential with an absurd plus-109 in their 10-4 season. That\u2019s with the Breeze taking them down by 19 one game. That\u2019s no surprise with Allisha Gray and Breanna Stewart leading the Mist. Paige Bueckers and Dominique Malonga lead the Breeze this season as one of the new teams. They dominated Rose to get to the semifinals.<\/p>\n

Season matchup: They\u2019re 1-1 against each other, both with double-digit wins.<\/p>\n

The star to carry them: I\u2019m looking for a scoring binge between Bueckers and Stewie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bounce Newsletter\u00a0\u00a0| This is The Athletic\u2019s daily NBA newsletter.\u00a0Sign up here\u00a0to receive The Bounce directly in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[208,7,329,187,194,6,12,179,472,471,474],"class_list":{"0":"post-634775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-chicago-bulls","11":"tag-denver-nuggets","12":"tag-houston-rockets","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-draft","15":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","16":"tag-phoenix-suns","17":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","18":"tag-san-antonio-spurs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116160659527127068","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}